If you were to ask me, along with 90 per cent of Canadians, what my opinion is of the ongoing conflict in the Congo, or the current Sudanese civil war, or whatever the hell happened in Myanmar in the decade since Aung San Suu Kyi was elected leader (didn’t she win a Nobel Peace Prize? Wasn’t she supposed to fix everything?), then I, like many Canadians, would answer in one of three ways: I don’t know. I haven’t been following it. It seems pretty complicated. 

Yet somehow, if you ask 90 per cent of Canadians their opinion about Israel and Palestine, they’re more likely to give you a clear-eyed answer. 

I was thinking about that this week, after the American rapper Macklemore was loudly booted from English superstar Ed Sheeran’s current North American tour. A brief explanation for the un-online: the spat started in early September as Macklemore, who was opening for Sheeran, used this massive platform to give a speech about Palestine. According to Macklemore, this led the Jewish billionaire Robert Kraft, who owns a major stadium Sheeran and Macklemore were set to play, to declare an ultimatum: ditch Macklemore or we nix the shows. I’ll note here that Sheeran’s public response later clarified it was, in fact, “venues” (plural) threatening to pull out, citing Kraft as just one. Perhaps not so much the Jewish conspiracy initially described by Macklemore, who once wore a horrifically obvious Jew-face costume supposedly by accident. Regardless, the show’s promoter chose to keep the shows and ditch the rapper. 

Macklemore revealed his side of things in a lengthy plaintext Instagram post, which led to a slew of Irish opening and supporting acts quitting the tour, culminating with Sheeran’s own backing band stepping down as well. Sheeran responded........

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