RANT: A PRINCIPLED STAND

 

    MACKLEMORE

THE OTHER DAY there was a bit of a spat in the music world when English singer, Ed Sheeran, during his American “Loop” tour dismissed his opening act, Macklemore, because the rapper uttered the verboten words: “Free Palestine” during his September 5-6 performances after which he sang his “Hind’s Hall” song, which honoured Columbia University students for their on campus protests against the genocide in Gaza.*

 

MACKLEMORE put his foot in it for daring to utter those (so-called) “anti-Semitic” words during his MetLife New, Jersey, stadium performances. The backlash was instantaneous, with billionaire Zionist Robert Kraft, owner of the Gillette stadium in Foxborough Massachusetts where Sheeran and Macklemore were scheduled next to perform, refused to host the musical event if Macklemore remained on the ticket. The Israeli-American Council (IAC) was in high dungeon over Macklemore’s public support for the Palestinian cause. They started a petition which garnered tens of thousands of signatures for the rapper’s removal from the show. 

 

THE GIG IN MASSACHUSETTS was canceled altogether, ostensively because of a severe weather warning. Other rich, Zionist billionaires and stadium owners followed suit, threatening to pull the plug on the show if Macklemore was not dropped from the tour. And so, the American rapper was let go by Sheeran, who is a friend and long-time musical collaborator with the rap star.

 

     Mackelmore at MetLife Statiium, New Jersey Sept. 5

With Macklemore’s removal from the tour, it's Oopsie time! Ed's the one who’s stuck in doo-doo now, facing a backlash from his fan base.

Subsequently Sheeran and his billionaire buddy, Rob Kraft, offered to donate 2-million-dollars each to Palestinian causes. Wha-wha… Talk about ham-fisted damage control! As for Macklemore, he's currently putting together a “Free Palestine Tour” with gigs in Dublin, Paris and London, and all the proceeds will go to Palestinian relief agencies. Quite the contrast, don't you think between neutral Ed and principled Macklemore?

BEFORE THIS, I had only heard of Ed Sheeran. I knew he was a musician, but that’s all. I had never heard of the rapper, Macklemore.¹ But, between the two, I think I know who is standing on the right side of history.

 

AFTER HIS DISMISSAL, Macklemore posted a long Telegram post which I include here:

 

“I’m not sure how to start this. So, I’m going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from “The Loop” tour. But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink [A 80s singer well past her sell-by date who expressed public criticism of Macklemore’s pro-Palestinian stance. Ed] is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.

The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.

Ed is my friend. I’ve known him for 13 years. We’ve shared late nights, studio sessions and stages. He has this infectious magic about him that I’ve grown to love. I consider him a brother. And because of that, we’ve had some difficult conversations this past week. The type of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement. Nothing I’m writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character. But, as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can’t change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.

Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.

Ed was in a fucked-up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had before. He told me that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. I told him that if those words were more offensive that tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood. But he couldn’t get past his public facing, “I don’t take sides”.

And I get why people don’t. taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships and access. I’ve lost all of those things. But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed. When one side has the bombs and bottomless financial and military support from America, refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the middle.

What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I’m sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, “Free Palestine” becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that’s why this time it became so important to silence me.

And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying “Free Palestine” gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn’t protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.

I hope this isn’t the end of my relationship with Ed. Thirteen years of friendship doesn’t disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door will always be open to continuing that conversation.

When my brother Omar was doing the subtitles for the video I posted from MetLife, I thanked him. He told me there’s a phrase in Arabic: “La shukra ala wajeb” (“There is no thanks for a duty”).

That stayed with me. Because that’s what this has become for me and millions of others around the world. A  duty. Not something deserving of praise or gratitude. Not brave. Human.

Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn’t, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people being displaced, starved and killed while the world debates which words we are allowed to use to describe it, how those words make us feel, and whether our discomfort matters more than the people living through a genocide.

I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say, “Free Palestine.”

BUT if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on.”

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. ______________________________________________________________

 

*

    HIND RAJAB

IN APRIL 2024, ON THE CAMPUS of Columbia University (New York), students protesting the genocide in Gaza took over Hamilton Hall, renaming it “Hind’s Hall” in honour of the five-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajad, who was murdered in cold blood by Israeli troops earlier, on January 29. Reader’s may recall the horrific event where Hind, trapped in her uncle’s car, herself wounded and surrounded by her dead relatives, pleaded for over six hours for help from Red Crescent Society (RCS) on a cell phone last used by her fifteen-year-old cousin, Layan, who had called the RCS for help before dying of his wounds. She remained on the line until Israeli troops killed her some hours later in a hail of bullets. The IDF troops, which included a tank that fired its heavy machine gun into the car, also fired on the RCS ambulance as it approached the vehicle to rescue Hind, killing the two paramedics despite the fact that the Red Crescent Society had gotten an ‘all clear’ signal from Israeli authorities for their ambulance to enter the fire zone. But they were attacked anyway. In army lingo that’s called a “double tap” strike—killing the primary target and then first responders to the scene. Two weeks later, when Israeli forces had moved on from the area, rescue workers and Hind’s family recovered the bodies of Hind and six of her relatives along with the two first responders who gave their lives coming to Hind’s aid as she pleaded for help over her dead cousin’s phone.

Amusingly, if anything can be remotely amusing about this disgusting incident, the IDF have recently announced it is ‘investigating’ the death of Hind as well as the World Food Kitchen murders done by Israeli drone operators on April 1, 2024. [Some April Fools joke! Ed.] Recall reports that a WFK convoy of three vans, clearly marked with the WFK logo on their roofs, when returning to their warehouse came under Israeli drone attack, along a route it had earlier been granted clearance from the IDF to use. Seven aid workers were killed, including one dual American-Canadian citizen. We’ll see where these investigations will go. Nowhere, I imagine. And they’ll come with buckets and buckets of whitewash.

1. One rapper I do listen to is Britain’s Low Key who is an articulate and thoughtful voice both in his policial analysis and his music. He appears on various podcasts including Double Down News.  

 

 

   

RANT: JUST A SHORT RANT

  

THESE DAYS, ONE THING I find particularly despicable are Canadians who go abroad and fight in foreign wars while serving in foreign militaries. I’m thinking specifically of those Canadians who go to Israel and join the IDF in its criminal endeavours in the Levant. I call these warmongers, ‘boutique genocide-enablers’. How else are we to characterize individuals who have no obligation to enlist yet travel to Israel for the express purpose of joining Israel’s wars of aggression in West Asia (Middle East). 

An interesting study by The Maple suggests most are young Jewish males who have attended Jewish schools in Canada, as well as summer camps, synagogues, rallies, promotional events and speaking tours, as well as school trips to Israel, and who come from traditional Jewish households (many from the Toronto region) where the survival of Israel is uppermost in the minds of their parents. These young men (mostly men) join for a temporary service in Israel’s IDF usually with their family’s whole-hearted support. In many cases family dynamics, school and community pressures help influence young Jewish Canadians to consider enlisting in Israel’s armed forces. Israel’s Law of Return stipulates that children born of a Jewish mother have the right to emigrate to Israel and automatically become Israeli citizens. However, this Right stipulates that returnees must serve up to 32 months in the Israeli Defence Force if they are between the ages of 18-25. Of course this comes with an extensive training phase, including Hebrew language classes before the recruit will participate in any active duty. (After 30-years of age, none are required to join Israel’s military.) Should the returnee, some in their teenage years, decide to apply for Israeli citizenship, then after they turn 18 years of age, as Israeli citizens, they are required to serve in the IDF. Israel has conscription for its entire popoulation, with only a few exceptions (religious or health reasons, for example).

 

👉IT SHOULD BE NOTED that Canada has strict laws governing the recruitment of Canadians into foreign militaries (the Foreign Enlistment Act). But that doesn't stop more subtle recruiting practices of Jewish NGOs. There are dozens of Jewish charities in Canada that raise funds for the state of Israel including ones that support Israel’s IDF directly like the Friends of the IDF or Beit Halochem Canada, the later supporting wounded IDF soldiers. There are dozens more. In 2020, a group of pro-Palestinian organizations in Canada accused the Jewish charity, Sar-El Canada, of violating Canadian law by recruiting Canadians to join Israel’s IDF as volunteers. The Courts eventually declined to take up the case because, they claimed, the possibility of a conviction was slim. They said such a charge was in the hands of independent law enforcement agencies like the RCMP, that also dropped its investigation of Sar-El, because it, too, could not make the case against the charity ‘stick’ under the Foreign Enlistment Act.

TODAY, there are approximately 1,500* IDF soldiers holding Canadian-Israeli dual citizenship passports 56 of whom are not Jewish and do not have Israeli passports. The later group are called “Lone Soldiers”. [A romantic name for latent psychopaths who get a buzz killing people. Just sayin’, Ed.] Altogether, there are six or seven thousand Lone Soldiers from around the world currently in the IDF who are non-Jews, or Jews who are orphaned or without Israeli family supports. So, to keep these mercenaries recruits from getting lonely, there are charities like Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Lone Soldier Centre that receive funding from other charities operating in Canada like the Canada Charity Partners (CCP) which funnels millions of dollars to Israeli causes.¹

IT’S SAFE TO SAY that Israel benefits from Canadian volunteers who, at the very least, perform logistical and administrative operations, freeing up IDF service members for other tasks (like bombing Gaza and Lebanon).  All, I might add, support Israel’s wars of aggression and its genocide in Gaza, its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and now southern Lebanon. Volunteers in Israel’s armed forces—for whatever reason—should know their service and activities as members in the IDF may someday come with charges of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. 

 

Young Persons, either naïve, idealistic supporters of Israel or those who have been cajoled by family and friends, or by local Israel support groups here in Canada, into joining Israel’s “seven-front” war, (as Israeli PM Benjimin Netanyahu calls his country’s terroristic rampage in West Asia) are at risk of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’² , so to speak, as they succumb to the rhetoric and twisted logic of racist Zionism. Their time with Israel’s army (“the most moral army on earth”, apparently) may, for them, become a dark and dangerous memory that scrapes to the surface like broken glass across bare flesh, resurrecting images forever engrained in their tormented and much embattled consciences.

 

SO, ON MY DESPICABLE LIST  I nail to the top of the board those individuals and organizations that inculcate, in Canadian youth especially, a blind obedience and subsurvience to Israel, a country that today practices genocide and ethnic cleansing upon its captive Palestinian population. It is also the country that has attacked and invaded its neighbours: Lebanon, southern Syria, and most dangerously, it has fomented a near 'hot' war  with Iran, and has, by-hook-or-by-crook, 'Espstein-ized' or not, coerced the United States president and a large swath of the American congress to direct the U.S. military to enter the fray on Israel's side. Most worringly, of course, is the fact that Israel is a nuclear Power, and there is a very good chance it may use its weapons of mass destruction in the near future, especially if things go pear-shaped for our erstwhile 'ally' in West Asia, the genocidal, apartheid settler-colonial state known as Israel. [see the Samson Option and Sy Hersh's book of the same name.] 

FRANKLY, I don't see Israel lasting another 78 years. I don't see it lasting another seven years if things keep going  the way they are.

 

👉WORLD OPINION has shifted in favour of the Palestinian resistence. Recently, several countries, including Canada, have issued embargoes on goods coming from Israeli businesses operating in the occupied West Bank, a small change and a performative act, to be sure, and on par with earlier sanctioning of several Jewish-Israeli settlers in the West Bank for violence against Palestinians living there. Nevertheless, it does lay down a marker of sorts, however tentative. 

👉On the other hand, revoking the "charitable" status of many of these Jewish and Israeli NGOs would be one way to put the kibosh³ on funnelling all that cash  and young Canadian bodies into a country (Israel) that, by its actions since October 7, 2023, and really since its founding in 1948, has  lost its right to be a member of the world community. But our politicians, including the current 'bottoms', like the Liberals, are gutless cupcakes and for the most part they go along to get along. 

👉It seems, our politicians wouldn't know a genocide even if one smacked them on the side of the head and stuffed them into ovens...😄😄😄.  

 

CHEERS, JAKE. ______________________________________  

* In 2220 that number was around 320.

    

1. So much so that critics call the CCP the “Canada-Israel-charity-pipeline”.

 

2. In 1979, in Guyana, Jim Jones, the leader of the People’s Temple movement, concluded the demise of his cult was imminent, so he served members Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Nearly 900 members (men, women and children) willingly committed mass suicide along with Jones. That’s were the expression “drink the Kool-Aid” comes from.

3. At least in would make donating to problamatic Israeli causes sting a little for rich Zionists here in Canada who currently claim such donations as 'charitable' deductions on their tax returns.  

 

[Interesting couple of articles here and here from the CBC on the flap caused by IDF soldiers going on a speaking tour in Canada called "Triggered: Combat to Campus--The Tour " in November 2025 Ed.] 

 

 

 

RANT: SLIDING DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE

  

A SHORT NOTE ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING seems to be going faster and faster these days, one example being the rapid deterioration of the United States, with its hollowed-out industrial base (all those jobs and businesses going over seas to low wage countries) and the incredible debt burden now standing at over twenty trillion dollars and nearly a trillion per year in interest payments! As well, the decline of the dollar as the global currency of trade, once a given in the decades following WWII is on the ropes. Now, more and more countries are using local currencies to evade the financial strictures^* imposed on them by the United States and its 'weaponized' dollar. 

👉The system of global trade and finance, brought into being during the 1944 Bretton Woods¹ summit where the post war years were envisioned and shaped, that system is over, as many commetators suggest. It's another data point exposing the failing American empire as it loses it financial mojo, along with its vaunted military might, as seen with its current military fiasco venture in the Persian Gulf. Again, the emperor or the empire has no clothes and everyone can see behind the curtain whose really in charge.

MOST TRAGICALLY, and most costly in blood and treasure (on all sides) was the “War on Terror” begun in in the  shadow of 9/11 during the Bush presidency. America spent trillions of dollars over nearly two decades in failed wars of choice halfway around the world. The cost of these wars has all but bankrupted the country.

  

AS WE GO FORWARD, marching bravely towards our imagined future, we fail to realize that the carpet of the past behind us is rolling up ever faster, what with nuclear Armageddon or the climate crisis increasingly at pace with our forward march. And when we finally see, too late of course, that the past is catching up to us, we then sprint forward in a desperate attempt to outrun the consequences of our actions. Eventually we’ll either run out of carpet or be rolled up entirely and thrown into the dustbin of history unless we heed the lessons of those who have gone before us whereby civilizations of one sort or another, large or small, do indeed come to an end, strangled to death by hubris or willful blindness, or both. 

And endings are rougher than beginnings because there is a lot to lose empire-wise. People and politicians cling to things that are precious to them and hold fast against the winds of change as they scour away everything, or most everthing, that remains entrenched and unwilling to change.  The question is: Will we remain victims of the coming changes or will we adapt and change ourselves? Only time will tell.

 

SOME SAY, tongue in cheek mostly, that the next species to emerge into sentience and roam the world will be racoons (Procyon lotor), a mammalian example of creatures that can survive in most environments, especially where there are garbage bins to tip over. Personally, I’d like to see whales, another mammalian, especially friendly Grays (Eschrichtius robustus) or giant Blues (Megaptera novaeangliae), take the lead on things as they leap forward into conscious self-awareness—though maybe they’re already there, aware of themselves, aware of us as they patiently wait in deep ocean waters for the handoff, so to speak, from Homo sapiens when we crash and burn and go down the tube, nuclear Armageddon or the climate crisis being the top two contenders that may bring about our demise. (There are more waiting in the wings, of course). 

👉Thus, we race desperately forward to our imagined future, not heeding the looming consequences stemming from our actions, both past and present, that doggedly follow us. We will need to endure those consequences, to reap what we have sown, and pay our debts in the decades ahead, debts to the world we share with so many living beings (plant and animal alike). We must pay our debts to fellow humans we have abused, past and present. We must pay our debts to the environment, to our world and to Gaia, and those debts must be paid in full. 

  

Cheers, Jake. _______________________________________ 

 

* “The Bretton Woods Agreement was a 1944 pact that set up a new global system of fixed exchange rates tied to the U.S. dollar and gold.” (Investopia) Bretton Woods is in the state of New Hampshire.

 

1. One example being the United States using “sanctions” which are illegal under international law because they have been imposed unilaterally by the US and not approved by the United Nations or other international regulatory bodies. 

👉Currently, some thirty countries (Canada, too!) are under sanctions of one sort or another imposed on them by the US administration, which, in the end primarily benefit rich oligarchs at the expense of the rest of us. {Nice. Ed.] 

Nearly one-third of the world's population, nearly 2.8-billion people are under US sanctions, which is an extraordinary number and a symptom of American hubris and the blind faith most of its citizens and elites share, namely that their country acts as a benign entity in its role as “global hegemon”, a role that was activated in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and the “Cold War” ended, leaving the door open for America to emerge as the world’s sole “superpower”. Today, that role is being challenged by an increasing number of countries that also are turning their backs on the US dollar and the heavy hand of the United States that imposes its order as ‘top dog’ in the world. 

 

                                               AT THE CLINIC WITH A JOB TO DO

(Gratuitous sexual humour. Enjoy.😏)