Ed Sheeran was very upset, all of his support acts, and even his backing band, had deserted him, what was he going to do?
Hind Rajab was very upset, everyone else in the car she was in had been murdered by the IOF, and she was terrified she would be next, what was she going to do?
Ed Sheeran was distraught, with his support acts gone, and ticket sales dropping, perhaps there was no place in the world for his music anymore. Was his life ever going to be the same?
Mohamed Abu Al-Qomasan was distraught, his twin boys, his wife, and the boys’ grandmother, had all been murdered in the same day by Israeli forces. Was his life ever going to be the same?
Ed Sheeran was getting very emotional, what was his life going to be like if he could no longer play to millions of adoring fans every night?
Rahaf was getting very emotional, how was she going to cope now that she was a double amputee who had to flee Gaza with her mother?
After all of the chaos of the previous few days, Ed Sheeran was in a state of panic, he simply didn’t know what he was going to do next.
After all of the chaos of the genocide that has been going on for the last two and a half years, many, many Palestinians simply don’t know what they’re going to do next.
So, unless you’re completely unplugged from social media and all news sources, and if that’s true, lucky you!, you have probably repeatedly been treated to the sight of a certain red haired man crying in concert. Here it is if you haven’t seen it.
Funnily enough, I would normally think it was a positive step for a man to feel he had the freedom to cry so openly. Toxic masculinity often means men are forced to repress their emotions, and often, when we need to cry, we are afraid to. So, if this had happened in a completely different context, I might have said it was a positive step.
So, what is the context of this? The context is, the tears of one, extremely privileged man being put above the tears of everyone in Palestine.
Over the last few days, more attention was paid to the tears of one man, who is in danger of, I don’t know, maybe dropping off in popularity so that he is forced to retire from public life to his solid gold island in the Caribbean, then to the tears, the anguish, the terror, of a people facing extermination at the hands of Israel.
And do you know what the funny thing about it is? If you read about the reasons why support acts, and Beoga, his backing band, quit the tour, NONE of it had anything to do with Ed Sheeran personally. Here’s Aaron Rowe’s statement after pulling out of the Loop Tour.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/music/articles/ed-sheeran-opening-act-aaron-191619314.html
Or look at this statement from Finneas:
And here’s Lukas Graham’s statement:
So, if the support acts, and Beoga, had said something mean and nasty about Sheeran, I’d have better understood why he’s so upset, but even then I’d still say it was a case of one privileged guy’s tears being more important than all of the tears of people experiencing a genocide. But, none of the acts who left his tour even said anything bad about Sheeran. Finneas didn’t say anything about him, just said he needs to stand with the people of Palestine. Both Aaron Rowe and Lukas Graham described Ed Sheeran as a good friend.
They aren’t even boycotting Ed Sheeran, they are boycotting Zionist billionaire Robert Craft, owner of the Gillette Stadium and first and foremost the one responsible for all of this (though I still say Ed Sheeran could have made a stand against him instead of caving immediately.) So essentially, Ed Sheeran is not the one being boycotted by all of the support acts walking out. Robert Craft is the one being boycotted.
NONE of the opening acts, as far as I can tell, has any ill will towards Sheeran, he just got caught in the crossfire of their boycott, I suppose, and yet, we’ve had to listen to a narrative of “poor Ed Sheeran” for the last few days.
And look, if Sheeran is experiencing anxiety or depression over this, well, I have experienced depression, and I’ve had generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety all my life, so I can tell you from personal experience it’s no joke. So, if he’s really in a bad place, absolutely he should go for counseling and try to heal. But, it is seriously a problem when someone who is not even the target of a boycott, but someone who is, essentially, caught in the crossfire of a boycott, gets to play victim and pretend that everything is about themselves. Because, there will ALWAYS be innocent people (and I’m not even arguing Sheeran is innocent) who are caught in the crossfire of a boycott.
I talked about this in my previous post but, when South Africa was boycotted, it must surely have been the case that some of the white people who were boycotted really tried their best to not discriminate against black South Africans. I mean there were plenty of white South Africans who opposed apartheid. There’s a list of them here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:White_South_African_anti-apartheid_activists
Now, imagine if we had social media during the South Africa boycott. Imagine if a video was uploaded, for thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people to see, of a white South African buisiness owner crying as their buisiness loses money due to the boycott. In this hypothetical we’ll say that this buisiness owner treated their black workers the same as their white workers.
If I saw such a video, I would feel really bad for this buisiness owner. But I hope we would all agree that, despite the unfortunate situation for this individual, the boycott of South Africa was absolutely the right thing to do. Because the tears of this one buisiness owner, do not outweigh the tears of every black South African who suffered the horror of Apartheid.
So, let’s grant that Ed Sheeran is completely innocent in all this. I don’t grant that, but let’s grant it for argument’s sake. Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham, Finneas, and Beaga pulled out of the Loop Tour because Macklemore was kicked off the tour, by Robert Craft, for expressing solidarity with Palestine. This is a serious problem. if billionaire buisiness owners can kick musicians off a tour for expressing a wish to end a genocide, then that’s not something we can just roll over and accept. To those who say, “What about Robert Kraft’s property rights?” I have two responses to that. Firstly, if you’re really a free marketeer, then it work both ways, Ed Sheeran’s opening acts have every right to seek other venues to host their music. Secondly, and more importantly, billionaires SHOULD not exist. I wrote about that here:
Robert Kraft’s silencing of those who seek to end the genocide in Gaza simply HAD to be opposed. If you’re really upset at the sight of Ed Sheeran crying, look, I get it. I am often full of empathy for people who are in floods of tears, it’s a natural reaction. But, can you still see how it’s a problem that Sheeran’s tears are prioritized over the suffering of the people of Gaza?
In any case, now that I’ve argued that a boycott of Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour would be justified if Ed Sheeran was completely innocent in all this, I’m going to talk about how Ed Sheeran is NOT completely innocent in all of this. Just look at the speech he made at a concert after all of the support acts walked out:
He starts the speech by describing the Israel-Palestine “conflict” as “the most complex political issue on the planet”. Since Ed Sheeran likes to pretend to be Irish, I wonder would he describe An Gorta Mór, or the the Great Famine, as complicated. “It was very complicated you see, the Irish people wanted to eat so as to, not die, and the British Empire wanted to export the food they wanted to eat to other countries, it was incredibly complicated you see.” He then says, “This IS a humanitarian issue, and I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore.” OOOOOH I can’t wait for this! What’s he going to say? Free Palestine? Put Nehenyahu in the Hague? Is he going to really push the boat out and argue for a one state solution? Guess again!
“What happened in Israel, and at the Nova Music festival was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain.”
Okay, as long as he described the suffering of the Palestinian people in a similar way it should be….. no!:
“What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic, and unjustifiable and……”
Come on Ed, you’re so close! Here, I’ll help you out, look, break up the word so it’s easier to say, gen-o-cid-al. Just four syllables. Come on man, you can do it!
“disproportionate” Oh Ed, you were so close! And by so close I of course mean not even slightly close. So Ed, it was disproportionate. Can you give me an example of a proportionate genocide Ed? Maybe your next album should be called “Proportionate Genocide”.
So, back to the analogy of the nice white South African who’s nice to black people but gets his buisiness boycotted anyway. Sheeran isn’t that. He’s just another privileged dude who thinks he can get away with minimizing one of the worse genocides of the 21st century without any blowback. His apparent idea of, a utopia, I guess, is Palestinians and people who want to kill Palestinians all singing along to “Thinking Out Loud” at his concerts.
So, Ed Sheeran is not innocent in all of this. Despite his protests that he’s not complicit, he is. We cannot allow the tears of this extremely privileged man to take center stage. Hopefully, if there’s any justice in the world, there will be a massive boycott of Israel. And do you know what will happen then? We will be flooded with videos of Israelis crying as their lives are made more difficult by the boycott. And yes, some of these will be Israelis who tried their best to treat all Palestinians with dignity and respect. But, we cannot let the tears of Israelis override our feelings of empathy for the people of Palestine. Just like we cannot allow the tears of a man who thinks he’s Irish and who’s responsible for insuring that we will never be free of loop pedals, to override our empathy for the people of Gaza, and for all oppressed people worldwide.
