A full house for ‘Free Palestine’: Macklemore wraps up solidarity tour in London

Felix Pope reports in Haaretz on  1 November 2026:

Before October 7, Laila Jaber had never heard of Macklemore. His advocacy for the Palestinians in recent years, however, has made her a fan, and when he announced that he was performing a concert in support of the cause in London, she knew she had to be there.

“I came because there’s a genocide happening,” the 37-year-old said as she waited for a friend to meet her outside the OVO Arena Wembley, a north London venue in the shadow of England’s national soccer stadium.  Jaber was most excited to hear “Hind’s Hall,” a 2024 single backing anti-Israel protests on American university campuses. Her Palestinian grandparents, she said, would be happy to know that the 12,500-seat hall had sold out.

On Friday evening, Macklemore, whose real name is Benjamin Haggerty, performed alongside other musicians and activists for the last leg of his “Free Palestine” tour.

The rapper’s whistle-stop trip to Europe, which saw him appear in Dublin and Paris on the preceding two nights, had been sparked by his removal from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour in early September. Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of a stadium near Boston, objected to Macklemore’schants of “Free Palestine” from the stage and his references to genocide in Gaza.

The following furor led to Sheeran’s other support acts quitting, Kraft donating $2 million to Middle East aid organizations to mollify criticism, and Macklemore hastily assembling his own tour in response to raise money for Palestinian charities and campaign groups.

The 12 beneficiaries span humanitarian relief and political advocacy. They include Medical Aid for Palestinians, the Gaza Soup Kitchen and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which provide food and medical assistance in Gaza, as well as Jewish Voice for Peace, an American anti-Zionist Jewish organization, and the Palestinian Youth Movement, an international activist network that campaigns for Palestinian liberation.

An effort also had to be made to overcome opposition to Macklemore performing in London. Writing to British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood last week, 50 members of the House of Lords called for the American’s permission to enter Britain to be revoked because he intended to donate money raised to the Palestinian Youth Movement, some of whose members have been accused of supporting Hamas.

“A refusal would be proportionate and narrowly targeted,” the letter read. “It would not prevent anyone in this country supporting the humanitarian organisations on Mr Haggerty’s list, nor restrict access to his music. It would simply decline to grant a foreign national the privilege of raising funds on British soil for an organisation of this kind.”

But with the request ignored, the gig was free to take place. For the people attending, the peers’ letter was further evidence of the repression of anyone publicly opposing Israel.

“At a certain point, it was more uncomfortable for me to stay silent than to say something”
Macklemore, onstage in London on Friday
“I think it shows you the biased right-wing government,” said Fazah Haider, 43. “It proscribed Palestine Action, it tried to ban Macklemore from the country. It’s all propaganda, all hasbara” – pro-Israel PR. “I love to come out and see the public don’t agree.”In the hours before the concert, thousands of people gathered on a plaza outside the OVO Arena. Many wore kaffiyehs while some flew Palestinian flags. Along a fence, members of a London branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign had set up large banners that demanded “Stop Arming Israel.”

For veteran campaigners, the event provided a prime opportunity to spread their message and seek new recruits. Handing out leaflets arguing that consumers should boycott Israeli goods was Mary Chater, a 68-year-old activist with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

“I think the world’s awareness of the genocide and illegal occupation needs to be raised,” she said. “Macklemore has been doing that just by what he said onstage. We’re here to augment that.”

Despite the growing popularity of the Palestinian cause globally, Chater worried that it had “gone off the boil” in Britain since a Gaza cease-fire was announced a year ago. Macklemore would help to energize a youthful demographic, Chater hoped.

“If it’s ever going to be stopped, young people need to be involved too,” she said, adding that she was concerned that Israel’s actions would harm Jews around the world. “People should hate Zionists, not Jews. I’m not antisemitic, I’m anti-Zionist and anti-Israel.”

At a stall nearby, members of Counterfire, a Trotskyist campaign effort, were selling the group’s newspaper, Palestine buttons and copies of “Social Reform or Revolution?” by the theorist Rosa Luxemburg, who was assassinated in Berlin a century ago.  It was these activists’ second recent trip to the OVO Arena; the first was for Kneecap, a nationalist rap trio from Northern Ireland. Across the road, a speaker mounted on a bicycle was blasting thumping Arabic pop music.

On a wooden bench, Imad, a Palestinian migrant to Britain, had laid out kaffiyehs for sale, but the market had weakened, he said. Almost everyone who wanted a kaffiyeh already had one.

But he was positive about the future of the struggle. Public calls by far-right Israeli ministers for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank meant that all but the most hard-core Zionists would turn against Israel, he said.

When a lone protester tried to attach an Israeli flag to a wall, a crowd gathered and began chanting “Free, free Palestine.” Soon, members of the venue’s security team and police officers stepped in to usher him to a fenced-off area that had apparently been set up in case more demonstrators rallied. Surrounded by more than 20 police officers, the man stood on his own waving his flag. Few people seemed to pay him any attention.

While many ticket holders said they had only become Macklemore fans in recent years, others were long-standing admirers. Taylor Pezzullo was looking forward to hearing “Thrift Shop,” the rapper’s biggest hit and a mainstay at the teenage house parties he had attended in his native Canada. “It’s so good,” he laughed – but he was also there because he agreed with Macklemore’s political stance.

“I think it’s important that the struggles that are being directly faced by impoverished individuals should be supported,” he said, adding that he could understand how Palestinians could be pushed to an extreme. “They feel there’s nothing they can do in terms of lobbying their governments. A lot of people in societies in the West don’t understand how much these people are being oppressed.”

Inside the venue, “I love Palestine” T-shirts were on sale, while a stall by the front doors solicited support for Taawon UK, a British charity that supports Palestinian communities through humanitarian and development projects. In the main arena, a screen dominating the stage showed footage of a children’s choir wearing traditional Palestinian clothing and singing on a beach.

In the hours before Macklemore took the stage, a succession of activists and musicians appeared. Speaking to the crowd at the start of the evening, Gazan journalist Yara Eid sparked loud cheers when she announced that she was the granddaughter of survivors of the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced during the 1948 war. She elicited boos when she said she had experienced the Israeli army using white phosphorus.  “In 2023 the genocide happened,” she said. “And I’m here to remind you that it did not start on October 7. … But we’re here today and we’re telling everybody that we still exist.”

As musicians including Paloma Faith, Vic Mensa and Nemahsis, a Canadian-Palestinian singer, performed, aerial footage on the screen showed small fishing boats, the Gaza skyline, and two places in Israel: Masada and Haifa’s Bahai Terraces. When a video montage revealed celebrities including Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon and Natasha Rothwell sharing their support for the Palestinians, applause erupted.

Later, as DJ Habibeats played Arab dance music, the venue livened up. On both sides of the hall, audience members began waving Palestinian flags and standing to dance and spin kaffiyehs above their heads.

Eventually, Macklemore himself appeared and ran through his hits, from “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” to “Hind’s Hall.” He was wearing a T-shirt reading “Free Marwan,” referring to Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader serving five life sentences in Israel for his role in suicide bombings and shootings during the second intifada.

Addressing the audience, he said he had to speak out because “those children in Gaza are our children.” He added: “I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling and seeing the horrific, unimaginable catastrophe that was happening in front of our eyes.  “And at a certain point, it was more uncomfortable for me to stay silent than to say something. And I just want to say, I don’t believe that saying something is brave. I don’t believe that saying something is courageous. I believe that saying something is human.”

Fuzzy Kara, 55, was clad in a kaffiyeh and wearing watermelon earrings, representing the colors of the Palestinian flag. She said the concert’s popularity showed that she was not on her own as a supporter of the Palestinian cause.  It was human nature to become apathetic over time, she said, and she was concerned that some people drifted from the movement after the cease-fire. But she was confident for the future nonetheless.

“You’ve got to have hope,” she said. “You’ve got to keep rebelling. And there’s no rebellion without hope.

This article is reproduced in its entirety