Pink Doubles Down on Criticizing Macklemore for ‘Free Palestine’ Performance: ‘I’m Standing Up for My Own People’

Pink reaffirmed her criticisms of Macklemore on social media Friday afternoon, slamming the rapper for calling for a “Free Palestine” and projecting images of the war in Gaza onstage while performing during Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour. “I’ve been quiet in my own words for a week, which you know isn’t like me. So here they are,” the artist opened, writing a lenghty 1,300-word social media post explaining why Mackelmore’s performances have offended her as a Jewish woman. Pink confirmed that she reposted a graphic that criticized Macklemore last week, but she added that the words in that post were not her own. She said that she would rather be hated for what she actually said than for someone else’s words. “Of course I don’t speak for Israel, or for any government. I never have. What I said in October 2023 is still exactly what I believe: Hamas is a terrorist organization,” she wrote. “Palestinians deserve a future that honors their humanity and their aspirations. Protecting innocent life comes first, everywhere, and nobody should ever celebrate the death of a child. Anybody’s child.” She added that she has spent a decade as a UNICEF ambassador, meeting in person with children of war “on both sides of that fence.” “I’m not going to litigate a complex war in an Instagram caption, and I’m not going to recite anybody’s slogan to earn back a follower,” she said. The “So What” singer specifically stated that her feelings about Macklemore have evolved over the years. She said that she supported him when he rapped “Same Love” as 33 couples, gay and straight, were married to it. She noted that her feelings changed after he wore an antisemitic costume while performing in 2014, a decision the rapper later apologized for. “Macklemore put on a hooked nose, a black beard and a bowl cut, performed in it, and called it a ‘random costume.’ Every Jew I know knew exactly what it was. The same love, it turned out, had a guest list, and we weren’t on it,” she wrote. Pink said that his recent displays of support for the Palestinian people felt antisemitic to the Jewish people. “Last weekend he stood in front of a stadium full of music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the movement of his choice and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn’t about them,” Pink wrote. “You don’t get to decide that for us.” “And now I’m standing up for my own people, and I thought I knew going in how lonely that would be. And it’s lonelier than that. But I’m doing it anyway,” she continued. The singer declared that her initial posts earlier this week were prompted not by Macklemore saying “Free Palestine,” but by other statements he had made onstage — in response to the backlash he was facing that his statements were aimed at Israel, not all Jews. “That’s what prompted my repost. Not ‘Free Palestine,’ and not anyone’s right to say it. I have never asked for another artist to be silenced and I’m not asking now. I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund,” she said. “What I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, ‘That scared me, and it scared people I love,’ without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being told I’m somehow cool with genocide because I noticed?” Pink noted that she has been outspoken about her beliefs when they were unpopular. She specifically pointed to her 2006 song “Dear Mr. President,” which she released in the middle of the Gulf War. She sang it every night on her tour in opposition to the war and “took the hate for it.” “I stood with gay kids before it was fashionable and with trans kids now, when it isn’t, and with their families, and I handed out the books that got banned, and you know I got called every name there is, and I’d do all of it again tomorrow,” she said. “I have stood up for other people’s people my whole career, and I know exactly what it costs.” Pink writes specifically to the people who do not agree with her position that they do not have to. “You don’t have to agree with one thing Israel’s government does to not want the Jewish family two rows down from you to be scared or targeted at a concert,” she said. “That’s the only thing I’m asking anybody for.” “I’ve been portrayed as the villain before. I can take it. I just won’t take it quietly, and I’m not going to teach my kids to,” she added. Her lengthy statement was written in her Instagram caption and continued into her comment section. The second half of her statement is nearly impossible to find in the comment section as users writing in support and against her position have buried the second part. Pink has since limited comments on the post. Read Pink’s full statement in this Twitter thread.