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Rapper Macklemore said Wednesday he will give away the entire $1 million he earned performing on Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour, directing the money to six organizations that support Palestinians, days after he was pulled from the tour over his on-stage advocacy for Palestinian rights.
"I will be donating the entire $1 million of my net earnings from Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour to six organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people," the musician, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, wrote in a statement posted to Instagram.
Macklemore also called on Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, to match the donation.
"Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting," he wrote.
Kraft confirmed Monday that he had pushed Sheeran to remove Macklemore from the tour, blocking him from performing at Gillette Stadium, which the Kraft family owns, citing what he described as Macklemore's "broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery."
Macklemore said the donation was not meant to be about himself or the dispute with Kraft. Instead, he said he wanted to draw attention to "the parents carrying their children into hospitals without the basic resources to treat them, and the physicians, paramedics, journalists and aid workers who keep going back in."
He referenced the killing of Palestinian teenager Muhammad al-Zinati, who he said died a day earlier in an Israeli strike while rushing to help someone who had been injured.
"He was a child. Both were murdered. Both should be alive," Macklemore wrote.
He added that humanitarian assistance alone would not be enough. "This is a manmade injustice, and I believe it requires immediate political change," he said, arguing that Palestinians "should not have to wait another day to be free."
Macklemore was dropped from Sheeran's U.S. tour dates after shouting "Free Palestine!" and performing his song "Hind's Hall," a track referencing pro-Palestinian campus protests, during a joint concert with Sheeran at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey earlier this month.
In his Instagram statement, Macklemore said Sheeran, whom he called a friend of 13 years, told him that Kraft had organized a boycott among other stadium owners that would proceed unless Macklemore was removed from the lineup.
Sheeran, for his part, said the decision to drop Macklemore came from tour venues and promoters rather than from him personally. "I am not complicit. I have my personal views on the devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn't mean I don't have them," he wrote on Instagram, saying he prefers to keep his platform "a place of safety and sanctuary" rather than "a political forum."
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