So now we know what happens if you refuse to prostrate yourself before the Gaza cult. If you politely decline wearing the keffiyeh like a holy shroud and chanting ‘Free Palestine’ on a mindless loop. They will destroy you. They will hound you like an infidel and seek your excommunication from polite society. Just look at what is happening to Ed Sheeran.
The anti-Ed hysteria really is spinning out of control
Pop’s Mr Nice Guy, penner of bloodless ballads, is being ripped to shreds online. He’s damned as a ‘coward’, a ‘lowlife’, even as ‘complicit’ in one of the great crimes of the 21st century. ‘Call off the rest of your American tour!’, cry the frothing Ed-hunters. What sin did he commit to warrant such venom? He refused to bend the knee to the Palestine mania and its truthless commandments about the Jewish state.
Sheeran’s US tour is falling apart following the removal of irritant rapper Macklemore as the opening act. Macklemore turned two Sheeran gigs in New Jersey into joy-sucking lectures about the wickedness of Israel. Images of the destruction in Gaza were emblazoned behind him on the stadium screens. It’s just what you want when you’ve forked out £200 to see your favourite British crooner – a deranged homily about ‘genocide’ delivered by the Temu Eminem.
Other venues gave Sheeran an ultimatum: ditch the Gazaholic or we won’t host your gigs. So Sheeran and Macklemore parted ways. Then all of Sheeran’s other support acts walked out too – ‘in solidarity’ with Macklemore – and even his backing band has now left the tour. A whole tour burnt at the altar of Israelophobia – behold the sanctimonious grimness of the Gaza cult.
Everyone is saying Macklemore has been censored. Leftists who giddily cheer the blacklisting of Israeli musicians for the sin of being Israeli are now posing as warriors for artistic expression. We weren’t born yesterday, lads. But here’s the thing: it’s not Macklemore who’s being shamed and silenced, it’s Sheeran. It’s our boy, Britain’s great pop export, for whom the knives of cancellation are being sharpened.
The digital invective being heaped on Sheeran is insane. They say he’s a Zio-cuck, that he has blood on his hands, that the hell of ignominy awaits him. He risks becoming a ‘pariah’, says Billy Bragg. He should call off this cursed, Zio-compromised tour, says the cyber mob. ‘Ideologically’ it’s the right thing to do, says smug songstress Paloma Faith.
Ideologically! It’s like a Stalinist reprimand. Fall into line, comrade, and cancel this tainted tour. As to Sheeran’s plea that he leaves politics out of his shows because many of his fans are kids, Ms Faith said: ‘I say “Free Palestine” to my children every night.’ Oh sweetheart, get out while you can. You know you’re in a cult when you find yourself whispering its daft mantras into your own kids’ lugholes.
The art-killing bozos of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) are calling on Sheeran’s fans to boycott his remaining gigs. It’s a ‘complicit tour’, they wail, as if Sheeran were taking a break between songs to fire missiles at Gaza. You almost have to admire the gall of people who pose as champions of free speech even as they wage holy war against a pop tour because the star refused to kiss the ring of their bankrupt ideology.
The anti-Ed hysteria really is spinning out of control. He’s a ‘gutless coward’ who ‘should never feel welcome in Ireland again’, says a writer for the Irish Mirror. The vindictiveness is staggering. Perhaps Sheeran’s name should be added to all travel watchlists, so that we might shield nations from the toxic moral fumes of this heretic who failed to say: ‘Free Palestine.’
It was Sheeran’s statement following Macklemore’s removal that really enraged the mob. There is ‘suffering and pain’ on ‘both sides’ in this war, he said. Oh Ed, no. You must never acknowledge the suffering of Israelis. You must never mention that they were raped and slaughtered in a pogrom of Nazi proportions just three years ago. In the eyes of the Gaza cult, sympathy for Israelis is the greatest transgression of all. For it does something unforgivable: it humanises the Jews of the Holy Land. It reminds us they are not in fact ‘genocidal maniacs’. It reintroduces nuance and truth, puncturing the infantile and bigoted dogmas of an activist class that insists Israel and her people are evil incarnate. Sheeran will not soon be forgiven for his sins of humanisation.
Who will now deny the zealotry and intolerance of the Palestine movement? They pose as peaceniks but come off like inquisitors, expecting floor-scraping obedience from all and flying into a blind rage when it is withheld. I fear Sheeran will buckle. But imagine if he didn’t. Imagine if he carried on with his tour, just him and his guitar, bursting the deathless sanctimony of the Gaza cult with a little musical joy. Wouldn’t it be amazing?
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