This is a guy who actually stands to lose by standing up for what he believes in. His career is just starting, and supporting Sheeran would have been the biggest break he could possibly get.
It would have been so much easier for the extremely rich, extremely successful headliner to say all this, but he decided not to. For anyone who has always disliked Ed Sheeran and felt a bit bad about it because he seemed inoffensive, this is a vindicating day.
You have Aaron Rowe, this small artist, calling what’s happening in Gaza what it is - a genocide. Meanwhile in Ed’s statement he kept referring to the genocide as a “war” or “conflict”
At what point did anyone on any side say "it's the children's fault they died"? People are rightfully saying that war is horrific and there is no way to wage it without innocent people dying, as is true in every war in history.
You guys know their PM is wanted internationally for war crimes, right? Things like… blocking medical aid and food to Gaza, for example. Which is something you should know about.
Thats not “any war.” It’s a war crime, period, and Netanyahu will be tried at The Hague.
War crimes and genocide are not the same thing. Again, words have meaning. Bibi is a war criminal and should be tried at The Hague. Same with Putin, same with members of Hamas. Food and medical aid are now going into Gaza - If Israel's intent was eliminating the population there they would not be allowing anything to go in. And a country with Israel's military capability could've wiped out every Palestinian on Day Two if that was their goal. It clearly wasn't.
That the genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza was not completed, is not thanks to Israel’s great mercy, but a direct result of the global outcry against Israel’s actions.
Speaking as someone who is pro Palestinian, there is blame on both sides. Palestinian Leadership has been horrible, and almost an asset to the Israeli genocide of their people.
Hamas wouldn't exist without Israel, both in term of human resources (it's palestinians who lost their families and close people) and finances (Israel financed them)
That’s because they are. Don’t pretend that Hamas and Palestine have never been aggressors in this multi-decade conflict. That makes you a fucking liar.
1,300 people were killed in Gaza this entire year so far. That's hardly a genocide when there are 2.1 million people packed in a 141 square mile area. I would hardly call that destroying them "to completion".
By this logic, any deadly hate crime is a genocide.
Also, the INTENT is to stop Hamas from shooting missiles. Israel isn't bombing indiscriminately. They are shooting down places where Hamas is firing from. If Hamas just gave up, Israel would stop.
Palestine was the original state, Isreal was created by carving out land that people already lived in for up to hundreds of generations.
This is like saying “You see that guy trying to kill the person who broke into his house and killed half of his family, he’s just as at fault for this conflict!!!”
You know literally zero about the conflict if you have a problem with that statement. This is just performative nonsense at the end of the day. No Palestinian children were helped or harmed by either Macklemore’s or Ed Sheeran’s stance but thousands of people’s jobs were put at risk.
Well Palestine isn't exactly the good guys everyone claims them to be and nor is Isreal. Both places commit genocide...so Ed's not even wrong. I'll probably get flamed for this but whatever...
Okay so Israel is to blame for October 7th? I don’t understand how that is negated. While not a perfect comparison, I can understand why Al-qaeda had extremist opinions and hatred towards the American government, but does that mean I justify 9/11?? Hell no! October 7 was an act of war, whether warranted or not, so now you have…war.
People would not have liked the civilian casualties the bombings of Dresden required in order to beat the Nazis. Social media has added a new element to war that has ALWAYS existed prior.
The Israelis are not a monolith. There are citizens who support the government, citizens who oppose it, and people in between.
Palestinians are not a monolith. There are citizens who support hamas, citizens who oppose it, and people in between.
Essentially yes an oppressed people will always fight back against thst oppression. The only way to avoid oppressed people fighting back is to not oppress people
I completely agree with this. However point blank shooting newborns and babies is, in my opinion, outside the bounds of fighting your oppressor. This goes for both sides regardless of the circumstances /reasons for the fight (again in my opinion).
this is giving aaron pr though. i would have never heard of him if he didn't make the statement. tbh i don't know who ed or the other guy were either, but since it's starting to blow up i listened to their stuff.
The US government, man. Look at how many military bases the US has worldwide, look at every country's reserve currency, look at all the McDonald's branches... Israelis just speak Hebrew but everyone understands what they want and deliver it to them. AIPAC is the translator.
You get more publicity supporting P than you do opening for ed sheeran. That's the reality. Theres sooooo much money to be made by jumping on this bandwagon that all of these no names do it and magically become "someone"
How can you be so delusional, or are you just pure evil? This is war, and the genocide claim is only true for Hamas, you, and other nazis here. No court or relevant country claims otherwise. But I guess Hamas, Macklemore and u/jemappellelara know better
Many genocides take place alongside wars, but are notably distinct. The Holocaust occurred during WW2. The Rwandan Genocide occurred during the Civil War. The Gaza Genocide is occurring during the Gaza War. But it would be wrong to conflate the genocide and the war. In responding to criticism about the genocide, he incorrectly (albeit almost certainly purposely) referenced the war.
It’s a longstanding colonial occupation. Imagine someone breaks into your house and kills your family and forces you flee. Then you eventually go back to the house and kill the person who stole it from you. Is that aggression? Palestinians are fighting back against an occupying force. Israel is mostly killing civilians in the tens, hundreds of thousands which is why this is called a genocide.
It's not that the language is per se incorrect — yes, there is a war/conflict involving Israel on one side and Palestine/Gaza/Hamas on the other — but as with all language choices, his decision to use that particular language in place of other terms (like genocide) conveys substantive information that, whether he's conscious of it or not, serves to obfuscate the severity of Israeli actions and atrocities. By referring to it as a conflict instead of calling it a genocide, Sheeran implicitly frames the Gaza War as a military dispute between peer nation-states, whereas calling it a genocide frames it as a humanitarian crisis inflicted by a militarily dominant regional power upon a comparatively far weaker and largely defenceless occupied neighbour state.
In other words, there's no such thing as truly neutral or impartial language in politics, and Sheeran's effort to speak impartially nevertheless presents a version of the events that minimizes Israel's responsibility/culpability. His statement attributes blame to both sides, and in so doing, does not acknowledge the degree to which the IDF has an outsized responsibility to prevent harm according to Israel's overwhelming military and material superiority in the conflict. Sheeran does not acknowledged the degree to which Western military-political support for Israel harms Palestinian civilians in contradiction to the laws and conventions defined by organizations like the International Criminal Court which our nations have otherwise formally agreed to abide by. He argues that "my fame and platform [are] a place of safety and sanctuary, to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open," yet I would argue that this position of feigned neutrality ironically contradicts the statements from the actual international fora for peace and diplomacy which have roundly condemned Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This isn't to say that Sheeran is the worst person around. There are many other, far worse actors who do openly support increasing war in the world, and who openly support Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. Rather, the manner in which he presented the issue reveals mere complicity. He explicitly rebukes the charge of complicity in his statements — he says he has "personal views on this devastating conflict" but doesn't act on them publicly — but all this reveals is that he thinks complicity means "openly supporting evil" rather than "allowing others to act through my own inaction." It is perhaps this type of inaction, hypocrisy, or inconsistency which has generated such public furor.
I've always found him such an overrated yet seemingly good-natured artist so I held my tongue and ngl the past few hours of watching the internet turn against him makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I'll make space for you guys on the hate train!
Oh I cannot WAIT to watch the Musk documentary and feel validated in the... Looking at him/hearing him talk has always given me an almost visceral urgh no
Oh my god. I'm an energy and environmental engineer, studied between 2013-2018, and holy fuck was it annoying to hear Elon here, Elon there all the fucking time. Been telling people something is off about him for ages, but meh. People bought Tesla's left and right anyway.
As an OG hater, I couldn't believe when people finally realized that every word out of his mouth was bullshit and he never once hit a self-imposed deadline.
I’ve waited for this day for a long time for the same reasons. Seemed like a good enough guy so why elaborate on how grating and empty calorie his music is
I was once told by a lady at the grocery store that I kind of looked like Ed Sheeran and I still don't know how I feel about that even like six years later.
And buy tickets to future shows. It's funny that he played a surprise pop-up show in an Irish pub in london tonight on short notice. I'd say the place was hopping.
There are all kinds of mid level venues all around the country in cities of every size. Not everything has to be at a massive arena. Bring the music to the people.
The US is still by far the world's largest economy, and a higher per Capita consumption spending than any other country. It absolutely will remain a destination for artists looking to make big money
Personally, for the longest time I didn’t listen to enough of Ed Sheeran’s music or know enough about the guy himself to have an opinion, but I was aware that he was the butt of a fair amount of jokes. I wasn’t opposed to his music or anything, but I never had the urge to seek it out, either.
Then someone introduced me to Nancy Mulligan, a song about Sheeran’s grandparents falling in love and getting married despite the backlash towards their different religious backgrounds. I honestly thought it was a super cool song about how grateful he was that his grandparents stayed true to each other and themselves despite the hardship that came with forsaking the approval of authority figures, and I couldn’t help but smile any time it came up on my playlists. But now? Now I can’t help but wonder if Ed Sheeran can’t be bothered to emulate the courage of his grandparents when it matters most.
I agree with the general sentiment here but he stands to lose the least actually. He is now going to gain tons of fame and money because of this. When you're so small with a tiny fanbase any stance you take that's an easy win with a crowd of people just means more eyes on you. I’m not saying he did this just for attention, but this will obviously have a major positive impact on his career.
This would signal that there is a change in society. We want to support people who stand or morals and values that align instead of believing there’s nothing we can do
This was my first thought as it's exactly what I would do as a first reaction. Id say the publicity from the news story and people listening to you to support you might be better than some unheard of warm up actually that most people are at the bar for.
But what I woulda done is chanted the moderated slogan into one of my songs, donated my paycheck and then quit the tour.
I have no idea who this guy is but I have a ton of respect for him now. It's crazy how hard it seems for almost any other celebrities to make a similar statement these days.
Yeah I disliked him before for the shallow reason that he insisted on doing those godawful acoustic guitar-hiphop hybrid songs instead of sticking to his lane of vapid, toothless ballads.
i was thinking earlier how ed could have made such a statement. that he has generational wealth already and would be fine. i didnt realise he has a net worth of 300 fucking million.
think of the publicity it would have got "ed sheeran tour cancelled by robert kraft"
I definitely feel vindicated because I always thought his tracks are so lukewarm, safe, insignificant to anyone who isn’t a rich white person whose main problem is finding a spot at Dorsia and a place for rich folks to go sniff cocaine after while they gossip.
Ed has more to lose for saying anything. The government can revoke his visa and ban him from entering the US to send a message
Plus it’s HIS tour, if he cancels he’s still on the hook for millions of dollars of expenses (like Bieber was for cancelling his tour). I’m protesting doesn’t fall under anything insurance would cover so it’s out of HIS pocket
He’d also be hurting the little people (service industry, stage hands, etc.) working those days, because they wouldn’t get paid
Maybe on the other side of that coin, this guy saw an opportunity to get more reach by grabbing some headlines. It’s still admirable what he did, but we can’t rightly know if there weren’t other deciding factors
Ed made an entire song using the Iranian people and then didn’t say anything at all when thousands and thousands of them were murdered by the Islamic regime which has occupied Iran since 1977. Ed is not a good guy.
The extremely rich headliner doesn't give a fuck about anything but his bank balance. He neither supported not opposed Macklemore's racist bulllshit. He only reacted when venues told him they were cancelling on him if Macklmore stayed.
Silence is violence and compliance; Sheeran only cares about taking your money.
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u/0ttoChriek Sep 15 '26
This is a guy who actually stands to lose by standing up for what he believes in. His career is just starting, and supporting Sheeran would have been the biggest break he could possibly get.
It would have been so much easier for the extremely rich, extremely successful headliner to say all this, but he decided not to. For anyone who has always disliked Ed Sheeran and felt a bit bad about it because he seemed inoffensive, this is a vindicating day.