US rapper Macklemore has announced that he will donate the full $1 million he earned from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour to six organisations providing support to Palestinians, days after he was removed from the tour following his pro-Palestinian statements on stage.
“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,” Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, said in an Instagram statement on Wednesday.
The rapper also challenged New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to match his contribution.
“Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting,” he said.
Kraft confirmed on Monday that he had pushed for Macklemore’s removal from the tour and had barred him from performing at the Patriots-owned Gillette Stadium. Kraft cited what he described as the rapper’s “broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.”
Macklemore said his decision to donate the money should not be viewed primarily through the controversy surrounding his removal, arguing that attention should instead remain on Palestinians affected by the conflict.
“I want to center 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 wrote.
He also referred to Palestinian teenager Muhammad al-Zinati, who Macklemore said was killed in an Israeli strike a day earlier while attempting to help an injured person.
“He was a child. Both were murdered. Both should be alive,” Macklemore said.
The rapper argued that humanitarian assistance alone could not resolve the underlying situation.
“But aid alone cannot address the conditions that make it necessary. This is a manmade injustice, and I believe it requires immediate political change,” he wrote, adding that Palestinians “should not have to wait another day to be free.”