According to some free-speech advocates, the Jews are making a big mistake. By complaining about rap artist Macklemore using a concert to promote the demonization of Israel, they are making him into a martyr or engaging in cancel culture that always backfires.
They’re not wrong about one thing. Up until last week, Macklemore, a 43-year-old performer whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, was not anyone who is thought of as a music superstar. The incident that set off the current controversy happened while he was serving as a warm-up act for another much more widely known musician, English pop star Ed Sheeran.
But now that some Jews in the audience at a concert at MetLife Stadium in northern New Jersey near New York City complained about the anti-Israel propaganda they were subjected to while waiting to hear the softer-edged, ballad-like songs of Sheeran, Macklemore is getting his 15 minutes.
‘Free Palestine’ martyr?
Macklemore’s publicized struggle with alcohol and drug addiction was hardly unique in his sphere. He was briefly on the radar of the Jewish world in 2014 for wearing a costume on stage in which he posed as an antisemitic Jewish stereotype with a huge nose. But after a minimalist apology for that appalling behavior, his career continued to flourish. He was even featured in a weekly address from the White House in 2016 with then-President Barack Obama, when he spoke about the dangers of addiction.
But now that he has been essentially kicked off Sheeran’s current tour, which appears at large venues such as NFL stadiums and appeals to mainstream audiences, he’s become a very big deal.
Even those of us who don’t listen to rap music now know his name and his views. His left-wing political activism and fashionable hate-mongering about Israel, which is spun as merely “pro-Palestinian,” are now discussed throughout mainstream media. And to those who applaud his use of a pop-music concert not merely to proclaim his support for “Free Palestine” but to spread blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” and being an “apartheid” state, he has become something of an anti-Israel hero.
The person who is primarily responsible for this is none other than Jewish philanthropist Robert Kraft, owner of the National Football League’s New England Patriots.
Kraft takes a stand
Kraft has become the object of scorn among the chattering classes for having the temerity to say Macklemore wasn’t going to be allowed to use Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., which he also owns, to perform the same stunts he did at the Meadowlands. As The Athletic reported, Macklemore claims that Sheeran told him Kraft had organized other stadium owners to join him in an ultimatum to the singer in which he was told that if he retained the rapper, he would not be allowed to play in their venues either. Without those stadiums, which can accommodate far more ticket-buyers than smaller arenas, the tour would have been essentially derailed.
In response to this, some of the other warm-up acts for Sheeran have pulled out of the tour. The American singer Finneas O’Connell, along with the singer-songwriters Aaron Rowe and Lukas Graham, and the traditional Irish group Beoga, all announced their withdrawals on social media. Each cited their belief that Kraft’s actions undermined free speech and their support for “Palestine.”
Rowe said that “as Irish people, we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation. I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children.”
But even those who don’t, as Rowe did, echo Hamas propaganda are slamming Kraft. According to Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Kraft was within his rights to say that Macklemore or anyone else couldn’t use his stadium to voice opinions he didn’t like. But he told CNN that doing so helps foster a culture in which free speech can’t flourish.
Lukianoff was a stern critic of left-wing cancel culture that resulted in the de-platforming of conservatives during the heyday of the Black Lives Matter movement. But since the start of the surge of antisemitism that followed the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, he’s used the same argument to speak up in defense of pro-Hamas mobs on college campuses, even when Jews are targeted by them. Though that sounds as if he’s being consistent, it’s not, and he’s wrong. During the height of BLM cancel culture, normative defense of Western civilization was unfairly denounced as racism. That is not the same thing as a demand to treat antisemitic tropes and lies as reasonable arguments that deserve a fair hearing.
The problem with Kraft’s critics is that the framing of this controversy as a “free speech” debate ignores both the context and the content of what Macklemore and others are doing. Whether or not the rapper ultimately profits from getting kicked off Sheeran’s tour (Abdullah Hammoud, the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, Mich., has invited him to perform in his Arab/Muslim majority city) or if he and others who share his views feel they are being oppressed by what they consider wealthy “pro-genocide” Jews, the real issue at play here is something very different.
Tolerate hate speech?
At stake in this discussion is a crucial question. Should Jews, whether rich and famous like Kraft or just ordinary people who buy tickets to pop concerts, as well as the overwhelming majority of all Americans who oppose antisemitism, be asked to acquiesce to the proliferation of such hate speech in the public square and do nothing about it?
Contrary to Macklemore’s disingenuous initial “apology” for his act, saying you care about Jews but just criticizing “genocide” and “apartheid” illustrates the key issue.
What he and the other members of Sheeran’s tour, along with their cheerleaders throughout the media, are doing isn’t “criticizing” the State of Israel or expressing solidarity with the Palestinians. In the wake of his stand, Kraft has bent over backwards to express his support for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, and even promised to match Sheeran’s donations to humanitarian groups seeking to help the victims of the war that Hamas terrorists started on Oct. 7. He isn’t saying that those who hate Israel have no right to voice their views.
But the notion that he or anyone else be forced to simply tolerate the spread of blood libels about “genocide” and “famines,” or the alleged wanton murder of children by Israel is intolerable. And so is the implication that supporters of the Jewish state, like Kraft, and the majority of American Jews are responsible for these mythical crimes.
In the three years since Oct. 7, Jews have witnessed an unprecedented increase in antisemitic violence, including murderous attacks. They’ve seen college campuses turned into hostile environments for Jewish students and faculty by pro-Hamas groups, and city streets turned into battlegrounds against them.
Just as significant, they’ve seen lies about Israel and the Jews mainstreamed by corporate media outlets that now routinely publish and broadcast the “genocide” blood libels and other big lies. This hasn’t just resulted in making Israel more unpopular but has served to legitimize antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories.
Under the false cover of concern for Palestinians, which for many of these so-called advocates is just the latest trendy cause, anti-Jewish hate speech has become not merely fashionable on the far left and right. As the sentiments expressed by Sheeran’s colleagues illustrated, they have become commonplace among the chattering classes, the arts and popular culture. The movement that backs the side that actually intends to commit genocide in the Middle East—as the orgy of mass murder, torture, rape and kidnapping on Oct. 7 demonstrated—cosplays as humanitarians rather than hate-mongers.
Israel-bashers aren’t being silenced
In this way, the Jews and their allies are smeared not only as “genocide” supporters, but as oppressing and denying free speech to the supposedly brave people who are spreading these lies.
Macklemore and his pals can spout all the pro-Hamas propaganda in Dearborn or anywhere else that will have them. As the tenor of public discourse in the liberal-dominated media as well as in some right-wing podcasts has shown during the last three years, they don’t lack platforms to spout their mendacious and malicious narratives about Israel’s efforts to defend its people against those who wish to murder them.
Decent people, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, who know that this “Free Palestine” movement is rooted in lies about the century-old Arab and Muslim war to deny the right of self-determination to Jews in their ancient homeland have been asked to treat antisemitic invective as merely something that they should agree to disagree about. Non-Jews like Macklemore and many others much more influential than him have had the chutzpah to tell Jews that they must deny an essential element of their identity and faith—devotion to the land of Israel—if they want to be tolerated in fashionable liberal society.
What this situation has demanded is a resolution on the part of those who oppose this mainstreaming of Jew-hatred to say they won’t tolerate it anymore.
While a well-known backer of Israel, Kraft has been a supporter of some of the most anodyne advocacy against hate, with ads about antisemitism that have annoyed many who think his Blue Square campaign, which has been promoted in Super Bowl ads, is not tough enough and portrayed Jews as weak. But in his comments about Macklemore, he stated nothing more than the truth when he noted that the rapper’s use of his act to spread anti-Israel propaganda, as well as a history of “antisemitic rhetoric and imagery,” is deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.
Telling Jews to shut up
Had a Ku Klux Klan supporter spouted anti-black rhetoric at a concert at an NFL stadium, no one would criticize the owner of the venue for saying such a person had no place in his venue. Nor would opinion leaders demand that African-Americans should simply not buy a ticket to such a performance. Everyone even tangentially involved would be put on notice to disavow such a stunt or face a storm of opprobrium.
And yet Jews are told to pipe down when supporters of Jewish genocide and the extinction of the one Jewish state on the planet—the goal of the “Free Palestine” movement—as antisemites parade their hate in the public square. Far from the Israel-bashers being silenced, it is the Jews who are being told to shut up.
Kraft’s stand must be the starting point for a new attitude among Jews and their friends about what they’ve been told to put up with. They and the broad majority of all Americans who abhor such bigotry need to make it clear that the only proper response to blood libels about Israel and the Jews is zero tolerance. That must be our standard for public discourse, and anyone who voices these lies or platforms them must be denounced and banished to the fever swamps of the far left or far right, where they belong.
Call it cancel culture if you like. But so long as Jew-hatred, whether under the guise of anti-Zionism or “Free Palestine,” which in practice are indistinguishable, is tolerated as fair commentary or even human-rights advocacy, the plague of antisemitism will gain momentum and continue to spread with terrible consequences for both Jews and America.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
