Crooner Ed Sheeran declared he “never wanted to be an activist” and wept as he broke his silence during his first concert since booting rapper Macklemore from his tour for making tirades against Israel.
“I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet,” Sheeran told the Philly crowd of concertgoers Saturday night.
During his speech, which came at the start of the Saturday night show at Lincoln Financial Field, he also clarified his stance on the Gaza War issue.
“But this is a humanitarian issue. I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel, and at the music festival on October 7th was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain,” he said as he broke down in tears.
“What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.”
“My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilian loss and loss of children’s lives. And the systemic injustice we’re seeing unfolding the West Bank cannot be overlooked,” the singer-songwriter said.
He received only applause from the crowd, which appeared to not fill the football stadium. He then broke into his song “Castile in the Hill.”
