Macklemore spent two nights opening for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Stadium. By Sunday, an advocacy group was circulating a petition asking Sheeran to remove him from the rest of the tour.
The rapper, born Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, was one of several support acts on Sheeran’s LOOP Tour at the 80,000-capacity stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Friday, September 4 and again on Saturday, September 5. On both nights he used part of his set to address the war in Gaza, according to Daily Voice, before performing his 2024 protest single “Hind’s Hall” as footage of Gaza, the occupied West Bank and pro-Palestinian demonstrations played across the stadium screens.
What he actually said
Accounts of the speech vary slightly between outlets, which recorded different portions of it. TheWrap reported him telling the crowd: “To the people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank: no, we have not forgotten about you.” He then called for a free Palestine and a free Lebanon, extended the list to Cuba, the Congo, Sudan and Iran, and described US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a “terrorist organization.”
Daily Voice recorded a longer passage in which he said he believed “every human being walking this earth deserves the exact same freedom, to know safety and peace before knowing the sounds of violence,” and said he would not let concerns about his own or the audience’s comfort stop him from speaking.
“Hind’s Hall” takes its name from the building at Columbia University that pro-Palestinian student protesters occupied and renamed in 2024, itself named for Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza. The song has been contentious since release: in 2024 the singer Matisyahu told TMZ he considered it antisemitic and said it was widening an already ugly divide.
Video from the shows captured cheers from parts of the crowd. Other concertgoers said they walked out.
The petition, and who it is aimed at
The Israeli-American Council launched the petition on Sunday, September 6, addressed not only to Sheeran but to MetLife Stadium leadership and to the venues, managers and producers attached to the remaining LOOP dates. There is a small discrepancy in the reporting here worth noting: TheWrap dated the petition’s circulation to Saturday, while Daily Voice and the Jerusalem Post both place the launch on Sunday.
The petition asks for Macklemore’s removal from every date he is scheduled to play. It also asks tour leadership to clarify whether his political speech, the accompanying visuals and the performance of “Hind’s Hall” were approved in advance, and to set out clear boundaries for political messaging from the stage.
“This was an Ed Sheeran concert – not a political rally, not a protest and not an activist event,” the petition reads. “The issue is not whether Macklemore has the right to hold political views. The question is where the line should be drawn when an opening act uses a global concert platform to advance a one-sided political agenda.”
The IAC has characterized the set as spreading anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda — a characterization Macklemore has not accepted and has not publicly responded to. The petition does not publicly display how many signatures it has gathered, so there is currently no way to gauge its actual support. Social posts pointing followers to it carry the line “Ed Sheeran. Your Show. Your Stage. Your Responsibility!”
That framing is the heart of it. The campaign is less an attempt to punish Macklemore than an attempt to make the headliner responsible for his opening act.
The refund argument
A parallel push has focused on money rather than removal. The group StopAntisemitism called for apologies and refunds, posting: “Imagine paying $500+ to see Ed Sheeran only to be ambushed by Macklemore’s relentless anti-Israel obsession. Fans deserve apologies and refunds.”
One of the more widely shared individual accounts came from a New York father, Josh Wein, who wrote on X that he had taken his wife and two daughters to Friday’s show as Sheeran fans, spent $180 on merchandise, and left their seats during Macklemore’s set. Wein said he had initially assumed Sheeran’s team was caught off guard on Friday, and that Macklemore’s return the following night changed his reading of it: “Friday might have been Macklemore’s decision. Saturday was yours.”
The actor Michael Rapaport, among the most vocal pro-Israel voices in American entertainment since October 2023, called Macklemore a “clown” in a post on X. The singer P!nk was also reported by IBTimes to have shared a post arguing Sheeran should apologize and offer refunds, and to have drawn criticism for it — though that account rests on a reshared item rather than a statement of her own, and should be treated with more caution than the rest.
What happens next
Nothing about this is resolved. As of Monday morning, neither Sheeran nor his tour management had publicly responded to the petition, and Macklemore had not addressed the backlash. The LOOP Tour has further dates on the schedule, and the practical question — whether Macklemore appears on them — sits entirely with Sheeran’s camp.
None of this is new territory for Macklemore, who has been speaking publicly about Palestine since 2023 and who caused a separate row in 2024 when he chanted “f*** America” at a pro-Palestinian festival in Seattle. What is different is the size of the platform and the fact that it belongs to someone else. Sheeran built the LOOP Tour as a stadium-scale pop show, and the argument now running is about whether a support slot on that stage comes with an obligation to leave politics in the dressing room, or whether asking that of an artist is itself the objectionable act.
Both camps in this row would say the answer is obvious. That they arrive at opposite answers is rather the point.
