The monstering of Ed Sheeran proves ‘Free Palestine’ has become a cult

Few of us had Ed Sheeran being accused of genocide denial on our 2026 bingo cards. But such is the vicious conformism of the pro-Palestine mob, even Britain’s most inoffensive, syrupy-sweet of musical exports cannot be left to perform to his audience in peace.

Sheeran was forced to open his show at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday with a pre-prepared statement, making his stance clear on the international controversy that almost halted his latest arena tour:

‘I want to address the question of where I stand in the situation in Israel and Palestine, and whether my doing this concert here tonight implies where I stand’, he said. ‘I’ve tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind because I want my music and shows to be about unity, not division, about humanity, not politics.’

How did we get here? Well, last week, Sheeran’s promoter booted rapper Macklemore off the tour, following pressure from the owner of the Gillette Stadium, Robert Kraft. The insufferably right-on Macklemore had used his supporting slot at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to say ‘Free Palestine’ and accuse Israel of ‘genocide’ from the stage – the modern-day blood libel used by Palestine activists to demonise Israel’s war against the terrorists of Hamas.

Sheeran’s Philadelphia address was the culmination of a week-long struggle session, during which all of his other supporting acts resigned in protest and the pro-Palestine set accused him of being some sort of sinister Zionist – purely because he refused to cancel the tour in ‘solidarity’ with Macklemore and the Palestinians.

While it should never have come to this, and Sheeran would have done well to ignore the mob or tell them where to go, his statement was probably about as good as it could have been in the circumstances. He called October 7 ‘horrific’, name-checking Hamas’s massacre at the Nova festival, before going on to call the Gaza war ‘catastrophic, unjustifiable and disproportionate’.

It’s rare that the butchering of nearly 400 ravers at Nova is even acknowledged on American arena stages, which in itself tells its own story. Depressingly, many Western pop musicians seem not to see themselves, or their audiences, in the party-mad young people who were butchered by jihadists in southern Israel that day.

You might have thought that Sheeran condemning the Gaza war would have bought him some leeway. It didn’t. The keffiyeh classes are incandescent that he dared mention the Israeli victims at all, and that he refused to utter the magic words, ‘Free Palestine’. Zarah Sultana, one of our lowest-wattage members of parliament, has accused Ed of ‘both-sidesing genocide and somehow casting himself as the victim’. She signed off with the not-at-all mental, ‘Enjoy your blood-soaked millions’.

All of this confirms what has been clear for some time – that Palestinianism is now a cult masquerading as humanitarian concern for the people of Gaza. And I don’t mean that as a metaphor. I mean it’s literally a cult. The insistence we mouth their slogans. The vitriol sprayed at anyone who deviates from the group’s monomania. All it’s missing is the charismatic leader, certainly since the IDF popped their beloved Sinwar.

This is no longer about the right of Pally mad artists like Macklemore to utter their ‘anti-Zionist’ blather in public – which should of course be defended, no matter how odious these cretins are. This is about forcing the entire music industry to conform to their warped, Jew-baiting worldview, or else. After all, Sheeran has been hounded not for saying something, but for not saying something – for asserting his right to stay out of politics and stick to the tunes. This is about conformity, not free speech.

The pro-Palestine cause took flight from reason some time ago. It is now fuelled by sheer, blind hatred. Hatred of the Jewish State. Hatred of anyone who sticks up for it, or refuses to agree it should be wiped from the map. Hatred of Jews, if we’re being honest, in many cases. What else could explain the viciousness, the refusal to recognise the humanity of the other side, the eye-rolling when you dare bring up Hamas’s murders and rapes?

That even Ed Sheeran is being slurred as ‘complicit’, as drenched in Palestinian blood, is almost darkly comic. This is a man who writes soppy love songs about how beautiful his missus looks with no make-up on. We do not need to know what he thinks about the world’s most intractable conflict, nor did he seem keen to tell us. But even poor Ed must now bow to the deranged diktats of the omnicause. If he isn’t safe, then no pop star is.

Good on him for ploughing ahead with the tour. Because it clearly wasn’t easy. At the end of the show on Saturday, he almost broke down, talking of the ‘weird week’ he’d had, the friends who have ‘backed away’, the family members who have turned on him. But, in the end, he said he knew couldn’t let down those who had bought tickets, booked hotels, hired babysitters. The roar of the crowd showed how right he was to do so.

The cult of Palestinianism might be growing, but there are millions more out there who can see through its bullying, its bigotry – who get that the conflict in the Middle East is, at the very least, a lot more complicated than their most annoying Facebook friend insists; who like to have the occasional evening out without being reminded of all the horrible things in the world. I’ll bet a few more of them have just become Ed Sheeran fans.