Ed culturally associates himself as Irish and you can see by his choice of support acts. This is going to impact him more personally than financially. The Irish have a long memory.
I have no skin in this game, don't really know the guy and have only heard snippets of his songs. What has he actually done to earn the epithet "supporting killing children"?
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but Macklemore made a pro-Palestinian statement at one of his tour dates, the venues panicked and refused to host him as Ed's supporting act (I think he was described as "inciting hate speech" or something, which is... laughable.)
Ed put out a bit of a wet-blanket statement where he acknowledged it's a messy situation but essentially refused to take a stance because that's not what his shows are about. He hasn't actually said anything egregious, but a lot of people are taking his "I won't take a side" as very much taking a side.
ETA: I kind of forgot, Robert Kraft is pretty openly pro-Israel. So his statement is really disingenuous no matter which side of the debate you're on.
Thanks. That's kind of what I thought had happened. It's so hard to take people seriously or gain any interest in learning about the issue when people leap from saying nothing to supporting killing children. That kind of ridiculous hyperbole just makes me think the problem can't be that bad because if it was then the facts would be sufficient. Or that the person saying it is so blatantly one-sided that their opinions are not the least bit trustworthy and they should just be ignored as a crank.
That's kind of my opinion on this too. I'm very left-leaning generally (a young woman in New Zealand, it's almost inevitable) but this feels like such a complex conflict historically and culturally, where both sides have done terrible things that I don't feel informed enough to be comfortable to have a proper stance outside of "Hey maybe we stop killing civilians."
I don't have an issue with being pro-Palestine, but I do have a problem with that twisting into "if you aren't pro-Palestine then you must be a Zionist who supports the slaughter of children." It's just not that simple, and that kind of hyperbole only puts people off.
Ukraine is better because it's noce and simple. Russia are definitely the bad guys and Ukraine are definitely the good guys so you can pick a side easily. Israel/Palestine is so complicated and both sides have done terrible things. And it seems like it is never going to end. The hatred is too deep and too historical. Whatever happens now is just going to be another dark chapter in a long series of dark chapters. It's like picking who to root for in a prison shanking.
I just feel bad for all the innocent people caught up in the pointless suffering. I'm not pro Israel or pro Palestine, but I'm against all the hurt that the bad people (i.e. the subset of the population there that are bad, I'm not suggesting that they are all bad) over there are doing.
Israel is the guy/prisoner who stepped into the other prisoners cell and laid on his bed/bunk saying "you got the top one chief". A bed/bunk in a cell that Israel used to have when they were in jail a many years back.
And when the prisoner said "get off my fucking bed" as he pushed, Israel pulled out a shank and started stabbing him.
Then on every now and then they would ambush the other and start shanking each other and their possie. Just some gang rivalry.
But one day the prisoner got Israel's squad while they were on the shitter and that really pissed Israel off so they broke out of jail and killed the prisoners daughters, sons, mother, father, uncle, cousins, grandparents, friends and dog.
It's a fucked up situstion sure, but we know who's who.
Yea bro could have moved to top bunk or asked Israel to share the bottom bunk(kinda gay but w/e), or just stopped the cycle of stabbing at any time by not reciprocating, but I know who the fucking monster is, and I have a real hard time feeling sorry for them when they get stabbed.
I also know that the fight went from back and forth stabbings to a one sided genocide, and that alone is enough for me to lose basically all sympathy I would have had.
What’s complex about 20,000 children dead? Talking about twisting things. Honestly, I thought someone from New Zealand would understand colonialism and the oppression of a people.
I absolutely agree that Israel's response over the last few years has been disgusting and disproportionate. However I know it's a conflict that goes back thousands of years and got really mucky after the Holocaust, which is what makes it complex. I don't feel comfortable "taking a side" because it's more nuanced than social media says.
I'm just of the opinion that both sides need to stop murdering civilians. That shouldn't be controversial.
This is why nuanced discussion can't happen, because people reduce it to something overly simplistic like this. Talking about twisting things. You can be against the actions without being in support of the people the actions are against. Because those people have done their share of bad actions too.
The facts would be sufficient? More than 60,000 children have been killed or injured. It’s not hyperbole in saying that if you can’t come out against genocide when you have the influence of Ed Sheeran, based on the influence on someone like Kraft, who is so pro-Israel that it enables a regime to continue to inflict untold suffering on innocent people. This is the truth and the facts.
This is where the deviation from facts into opinions happens. What could Ed Sheeran say (or sing) that would stop Israel from killing people (children included)? Even the specific mention of "supports killing children" is just weasel words trying to trigger an emotional response. Not humans. Not Palestinians. Not Gazans. Only children apparently. It's all just blatant propaganda and discredits you as a source of information.
Ed Sheeran could have said absolutely nothing, told Kraft to politely fuck off, and never opened his mouth about any of this—and he could have been a hero of free speech.
Instead, he has become an enabler of censorship that perpetuates the genocide of innocent children.
If you are not on the side of the oppressed, you are on the side of the oppressor. If you cannot speak out against genocide when you have nothing to lose, while sitting on billions and having an enormous platform, then what exactly are you doing?
You can rationalise it however you want, but you cannot rationalise a genocide that is being live-streamed in front of the world. If you cannot recognise a genocide when it is happening in real time, what exactly is wrong with you and your entire existence?
No skin in the game. I completely understand, but it’s kinda the point. How hard is it to be against genocide when it has such little impact on our day-to-day? This is the same as saying both sides. If you are not against the oppressor, who are you for?
It's grossly oversimplifying a complex issue. It's not a clearcut case of one side bad one side good like the Ukraine-Russia war. It's both sides being bad for who knows how long and currently having one unusually large spike of extra badness from one side. Of course I'm against genocide but it doesn't mean I'm pro Israel or pro Palestine. And there's no way to talk about it (or even to not talk about it) without bad actors from one side or the other spinning what you say into support for hate crimes.
Nobody is interested in nuance, they want you on their team and will accuse you of hatemongering or supporting genocide or supporting killing children or being a paedophile or a nazi or any number of other nasty labels if you don't reduce the whole thing to cartoonish simplicity where their team are the good guys and the other team are the baddies.
I'm honestly confused here. What makes Belfast an entirely different matter, was his NI family connection from a unionist family?
I'm also unsure of what you mean by the sympathy for Israel in the early years of it's existence. I'm not aware of examples of where this was hostile to Palestinians? I always thought this early sympathy was just related to Israel as opposed to picking a side in a hostile situation?
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u/Crazy-Present4764 27d ago
Kanye put out a song called heil Hitler and still sells out stadiums.
Ed will be ok.