Macklemore has responded to critics of his recent onstage pleas for a “Free Palestine”, saying striving for equality “should never be controversial”.
After making an impassioned speech calling for “all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality” while opening for Ed Sheeran across recent dates in New Jersey, the rapper has faced calls for his removal from the tour by the Israeli-American Council, who claimed he had used his platform to “advance a one-sided political agenda”.
Speaking from the stage at MetLife Stadium over the weekend, Macklemore told the crowd that he wanted those in Gaza and the West Bank to know “they have not been forgotten”, adding: “I believe that every human being walking on this earth deserves exactly the same freedom.”
“I say Free Palestine, free Cuba, Congo, Sudan and Iran and all the people of America who live in fear because of this terrorist organisation ICE,” he continued, before launching into pro-Palestine track ‘Hind’s Hall’ while showing footage of Gaza onscreen.
Boy George – who drew huge backlash recently after sharing the AI-assisted pro-Israel track ‘We Will Dance Again’ – has since shared social media posts criticising his remarks.
He posted an AI-generated image to Instagram showing Sheeran wearing a shirt that says: “Wkack Mack No More”. He also took to Twitter/X to say he had “never been an @Edsheeran fan and nothing has changed”.
P!NK, meanwhile, also reshared a post from the StopAntisemitism group, who claimed that Macklemore had “accused Israel of a false ‘genocide,’ and turned a mainstream event into a political nightmare against the Jewish state,” per JustJared.
A United Nations-appointed Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and Amnesty International reached the same conclusion.
Israel has repeatedly denied committing genocide or war crimes, maintaining that its military campaign followed the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 and was an act of self-defence. It rejected the UN Commission’s findings as “distorted and false” and a “libellous sham”.
A more recent Commission of Inquiry from the UN said in June that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank.”
Sheeran has yet to address the controversy, but Macklemore has stood by his comments, sharing a full clip of his MetLife speech alongside the caption: “Wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial.”
In that speech, he addressed his “Jewish brothers and sisters”, saying that “criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you.”
