Last Friday night at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, 80,000 people came to see Ed Sheeran. What they encountered first was Macklemore, wearing a keffiyeh, performing his protest song “Hind’s Hall” while footage from Gaza rolled across the stadium screens, telling the crowd that a big part of the reason he joined the tour was so he could stand in stadiums across America and say two words: “Free Palestine.” He accused Israel of committing genocide. He repeated the performance the following night.

The reaction was swift and predictable. Jewish organizations condemned it. A petition circulated. Commentators wrote columns. Ed Sheeran said nothing.

And then, in all likelihood, nothing will change. Macklemore will finish the tour. The venues will collect their revenue. The sponsors will remain silent. And the next artist who wants to turn a mainstream concert into a political rally will do exactly that, because they will have watched this episode unfold and learned that the cost is zero.

That is the real story. Not what Macklemore said. What happens, or fails to happen, next.

The Question Nobody Is Asking

There is no shortage of condemnation. Jewish organizations are right to be outraged. Concertgoers who paid hundreds of dollars to hear music and found themselves at an undisclosed political rally have every reason to feel deceived. The Israeli American Council’s petition is a legitimate response. But outrage, deployed without consequence, is not a strategy. It is a release valve. It lets the pressure out without fixing the pipe.

The question that demands an answer is not whether Macklemore was wrong to do what he did. The question is: what has happened to our society that we continue to allow inflammatory rhetoric on stages large and small, year after year, with no meaningful accountability for the performers who deliver it, the headliners who provide the platform, the venues that profit from the ticket sales, the promoters who booked the tour, or the sponsors whose logos appear on the same stage?

If there are no consequences, why would this stop? It will not stop. It will multiply. And the incidents will grow larger, because the audiences are larger, and the silence of the industry is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)