When merely saying ‘Free Palestine’ is now ‘antisemitism’

Just consider where we are now.

A rapper, using free speech calls out ‘Free Palestine” and Zionist Apologists claim he is antisemitic and a Billionaire Stadium owner who is a mate of Bibi and was mentioned in the Epstein Files pressures Ed Sheeran who weakly folds.

Sheeran says’s he isn’t taking sides, but when it comes to war crimes so extreme they breach the legal definition of genocide, not taking sides is taking the side of the Oppressor.

Sheeran says he is not political but did a private show for Bibi.

“Free Palestine” – those two words, according to Zionist Apologists, equates to antisemitism.

Isn’t it hilarious how so many of these right wing free speech champions turn the second you criticise Israel?

As for the smears and lies that Macklemore has a history of antisemitism, I’ll leave to to the brilliant Caitlin Johnstone to rip that lie to pieces…

As American rapper Macklemore becomes a frontline for renewed mainstream discourse about Israeli atrocities in Gaza, Israel apologists have been falling all over themselves to circulate the demonstrably false narrative that the artist has a history of antisemitic behavior.

Zionist billionaire Robert Kraft defended his intervention to removeMacklemore from the Ed Sheeran tour for saying “Free Palestine” onstage, falsely claiming in a statement that the artist has a “history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.”

The Anti-Defamation League falsely claimed that Macklemore’s onstage pro-Palestine rhetoric is colored by the artist’s “record of demonizing Israel and Israelis, falsely accusing Israel of genocide and engaging in antisemitic rhetoric and behavior.”

“For years, Macklemore has pushed antisemitic tropes,” claimed ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt on news of the artist’s removal from the tour.

Jonathan Greenblatt @JGreenblattADL Glad to see Macklemore off Ed Sheeran’s tour. For years, Macklemore has pushed antisemitic tropes and demonized Israel and Israelis. Now he certainly has the 1A right to speak out and express his views, but demonizing Jews and Israelis shouldn’t be rewarded. 12:39 AM · Sep 15, 2026 · 126K Views 19 Reposts · 409 Likes

As is generally the case with people who defend the actions of the state of Israel, these claims are lies designed to advance the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

I don’t generally enjoy talking about celebrities or picking apart the minutiae of their public controversies, but since this one has landed in my area of interest and is being frantically promoted by hasbarists on every corner of the internet, I’m going to take some time to debunk these claims point by point.

When Israel apologists claim that Benjamin Hammond Haggerty AKA Macklemore has a “history of antisemitism,” they are referring to one incident and one incident only. In 2014 Haggerty drew controversy for wearing a large fake nose in a performance which was subsequently decried as antisemitic, which would have been a fair claim if the artist had intended to depict a Jewish person.

The problem is that there is absolutely zero evidence this was the case. In a lengthy statement apologizing profusely to anyone he’d offended, Haggerty said he’d grabbed a bunch of costume supplies in order to disguise himself for a show where he could walk among the crowd and surprise them with a short performance.

Here’s an excerpt:

“On Friday night we had a surprise show at the EMP Museum in Seattle. Earlier in the day I thought it would be fun to dress up in a disguise and go incognito to the event, so that I could walk around unnoticed and surprise the crowd with a short performance. I picked up a bunch of fake mustaches and beards and grabbed a left over wig from our recent trip to Japan.

“As it turns out the fake noses they sell at the costume store are usually big (my nose didn’t fit most of them). So I ended up with a big witch nose. I went with a black beard, because that’s the furthest color from my natural hair. Disguise was the intention. I personally thought I looked very ambiguous in terms of any ‘type’ of person. Some people there thought I looked like Ringo, some Abe Lincoln. If anything I thought I looked like Humpty Hump with a bowl cut.”

Macklemore @macklemore A fake witches nose, wig, and beard = random costume. Not my idea of a stereotype of anybody. 6:11 AM · May 19, 2014 746 Replies · 812 Reposts · 2.49K Likes

A witch nose. It was a witch nose from a costume store. For Halloween.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Haggerty was lying about any of this. If there had been other incidents of the artist expressing hateful opinions about Jews, one could make the case that he may have been lying about his intentions with the fake nose incident. But there are no such incidents. There was the witch nose thing in 2014, and then saying “Free Palestine” twelve years later. I’ve been arguing about this with hasbarists online for two days, and not one of them has been able to cite a single example of hateful behavior toward Jews apart from him wearing a fake nose many years ago.

I’ve seen some people try to argue antisemitic intentions by citing the fact that Macklemore wore the outfit to perform his song “Thrift Shop”, playing into tropes about Jews pinching pennies, but anyone who makes that argument simply hasn’t listened to the lyrics of the song or watched the music video. It’s very clearly and unambiguously a song about shopping at a thrift store because you’re poor, not because you’re cheap; the line “only got 20 dollars in my pocket” is right there in the chorus. Unless being poor is an “antisemitic trope” now, that argument is out the window.

I’ve seen some people point to a still image from the incident in which Macklemore appears to be doing a “sieg heil” gesture, but that’s out the window too because (A) if Macklemore had done an actual deliberate-looking Nazi salute we would have seen video footage of it, and (B) we learned from right wing efforts to defend Elon Musk’s actual full-fledged Roman salute at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration rally that it is very easy to grab a still frame of a moving person with their arm in that position; I remember seeing Libs of TikTok share images of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris with their arms in the “Heil Hitler” position to argue that Musk’s blatant Nazi gesture was being mischaracterized. It seems clear that Macklemore was just dancing to the song and amping the crowd and had his arm up at some point in his movements.

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok Can someone direct me to the articles where the media expressed outrage over this? Can’t find any… 4:59 AM · Jan 21, 2025 · 160M Views 5.73K Replies · 22.6K Reposts · 103K Likes

And that is it. That’s the extent of the argument that Macklemore has a “history of antisemitism”. It’s a classic Gish gallop fallacy, where a bunch of individually weak arguments are clumped together to create the illusion of a strong argument.

Caitlin’s Newsletter

 

…Macklemore doesn’t have any history of antisemitism and misconstruing a performance he did with a witches nose mask into an anti Jewish jig is so fucking farcical.

This is where we are now, ‘Free Palestine” is so antisemitic you must lose work and be shunned?

They will want to arrest you soon for saying “Free Palestine”.

I’m waiting for ACT to designate saying “Fee Palestine” as a hate crime.

 

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