Macklemore claimed Monday the Jewish NFL owner Robert Kraft pressured Ed Sheeran to drop him from his tour after pro-Palestinian elements of his show.
“Ed told me Robert Kraft called him,” Macklemore wrote on X Monday. “We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium.”
“Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues,” he added.
I’m a little confused. They didn’t use the phrase doesn’t take sides and it seemed pretty clear where everyone stood. Macklemore has made several pro‐Palestine statements, they note Kraft withheld donations to Columbia after pro-Palestine protests, and Macklemore said Sheeran was more or less left with no option but to drop him and doesn’t fault him here.
It’s from a post Macklemore made:
"He told me that the words ‘Free Palestine’ and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with.
I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood.
But he couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides’."