Shiryn Ghermezian/ US Correspondent
An umbrella group that represents the largest Jewish organizations in the United Kingdom is demanding answers from LiveNation UK for promoting Macklemore’s “Free Palestine” tour that was announced on Thursday.
The Seattle-based rapper’s new tour will start in Dublin on Oct. 26, followed by Paris on Oct. 29 and London on Oct. 30. Collaborating artists will be announced soon as well as US dates. Tickets go on sale next week.
Macklemore said all proceeds from the tour will go to organizations supporting “Palestine and the Palestinian movement,” including the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The US government discovered that more than 100 UNRWA staff members were linked to the Hamas and participated in the Palestinian terrorist group’s deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
After Live Nation UK advertised on social media about Macklemore’s Oct. 30 concert in London’s OVO Arena Wembley, the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) said the concert promoter’s decision to back the “Free Palestine” tour “raises serious concerns.”
“Macklemore is entitled to advocate for Palestinian rights. However, concerns arising from the imagery that he has used and material in his recent performances must be taken seriously,” JLC wrote in a post on X.
The umbrella body of the UK Jewish community is asking Live Nation UK “to explain how they assessed the concerns about this event, and what steps they will take to ensure that Jewish audiences and staff feel safe and welcome.”
The Jewish group represents synagogues, care organizations, education charities, and regional representative councils in the UK.
Macklemore, whose real name is Benjamin Haggerty, announced the “Free Palestine” tour after being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s “Loop” tour for proclaiming “Free Palestine” and giving anti-Israel speeches onstage earlier this month. The “Thrift Shop” rapper then performed a song in which he expressed avid support for the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests at college and university campuses. After Macklemore’s removal from the tour, Sheeran’s supporting acts and his house band pulled out of the tour in solidarity with the rapper. Sheeran later said the decision to drop Macklemore from the tour was made solely by his promoter.
“So, as you all know, my schedule freed up a bit,” Macklemore wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday. “What happened to me is bigger than one artist or one stage. When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.”
“It’s 2026. Being apolitical during a genocide doesn’t work anymore,” he added. “People are asking artists to show up, educate themselves and be in community. To use the stage for more than entertainment. To push back when the call for a Free Palestine is met with attempts to silence it.”
Macklemore claimed a group of stadium owners, led by Patriots and Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft, rallied together to have him removed from Sheeran’s tour. Kraft accused Macklemore of promoting hatred and antisemitism, and said the rapper’s use of “antisemitic rhetoric and imagery has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.” After Macklemore pledged to donate $1 million in earnings he received from Sheeran’s tour to organizations supporting Palestinians, including three with Hamas and other terrorist ties, Kraft said he intended to donate $2 million to aid the “humanitarian crisis” in the Middle East.
Sheeran addressed the controversy onstage during performances his past weekend. At the start of his set in Philadelphia last Saturday, he told the audience he made “mistakes” in his handling of the situation, apologized to fans, and called the Middle East conflict “a humanitarian issue.” The British singer called Israel’s military actions in Gaza during the Israel-Hamsa war “catastrophic and unjustifiable, and disproportionate” and accused Israel of “systemic injustice” in the West Bank. He also described the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, as “horrific.”
