Macklemore has announced that he will be donating the $1 million he made from the Ed Sheeran tour to organisations supporting Palestinian people.Macklemore had been on Sheeran’s Loop Tour until earlier this week when it was announced that he’d been dropped from the remaining date after he called to ‘free Palestine’ while on stage.In a statement shared on Monday (14 September), the US rapper said he was ditched after Gillette Stadium and Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft gave Sheeran an ‘ultimatum’.Macklemore, whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, said: “Ed was in a ****** up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before.
“He told me that the words ‘Free Palestine’ and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood. But he couldn’t get past his public facing: I don’t take sides.’”Sheeran then shared his own statement in which he said that the decision to remove Macklemore had been down to the tour’s promoters and not him.In a fresh update, Macklemore has revealed that he’ll be putting his money where his mouth is and donating his earnings from the tour to several causes.”With everything that has happened over the last 48 hours, I want to bring the conversation back to where it belongs: to the Palestinian people who are still being killed, still living under military occupation, and still fighting for their freedom,” Macklemore wrote in a post on Instagram.