Macklemore launching ‘Free Palestine’ concert tour

What happened

Macklemore on Thursday announced a Free Palestine concert tour, less than two weeks after the rapper was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour for making pro-Palestinian comments onstage and accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. All proceeds from the new tour will benefit Palestinian aid organizations, Macklemore and Live Nation said.

Who said what

After Macklemore was kicked off Sheeran’s tour, all the other supporting artists quit. The controversy “thrust the Israel-Hamas war into the pop music world,” The New York Times said. There’s been a “collective awakening around Palestinian liberation,” Macklemore said in a social media post announcing his tour. “When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.”

At the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the allegation of Israeli genocide the “biggest lie of the century.” When “scores of delegates trooped out of the hall in protest” of his speech, The Associated Press said, Netanyahu called them “moral cowards.”

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What next?

The Free Palestine Tour is scheduled to begin with three dates next month in Dublin, Paris and London. Announcements about the other artists on the tour, “as well as U.S. dates, are forthcoming,” said the AP.