Pink issued an extensive statement on Friday addressing the backlash she faced for resharing a post calling out Macklemore for his pro-Palestine comments and demanding he be removed from Ed Sheeran’s ongoing tour.
In a lengthy post on Instagram Friday, the singer-songwriter said that the post she had shared “said things in words I didn’t write, and I wouldn’t have chosen all of them,” further stating that “I’d rather be disagreed with for what I actually said than hated for what anybody else wrote, so let me say it.”
“I was born a Jew. I didn’t pick it, and I’ve never hidden it,” she wrote. “And this week a whole lot of people decided what I believe without asking me, without checking a single thing I’ve ever said or done, because a repost and the word ‘Jew’ were apparently enough to fill in the rest. But let me fill it in… myself.”
“Of course I don’t speak for Israel, or for any government,” she continued. “I never have. What I said in October 2023 is still exactly what I believe: Hamas is a terrorist organization. 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. I’ve spent a decade as a UNICEF ambassador for kids who didn’t choose the country or the war they were born into, and I have grieved every one of them, on both sides of that fence. I didn’t do it from behind a screen; I went to those children and held them. 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 continued her post in her comment section, though it appears much of her statement was removed after she limited comments on the post. Her statement in full is still available in screenshots online, including in the X post above.
Regarding Macklemore specifically, she recalled the rapper wearing a costume during a performance back in 2014 that was widely criticized at the time as antisemitic. He apologized, saying that “I respect all cultures and all people.”
“Every Jew I know knew exactly what it was,” Pink wrote Friday. “But he apologized, and I let it go, because that’s what we do. We let it go. Then 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. You don’t get to decide that for us.”
“That’s what prompted my repost,” Pink continued. “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. 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 further said she was “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 wrote that the phrase “zionist” has become a “slur by people who couldn’t tell you the details of what I believe.”
She concluded her post in remembrance of today’s 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and for the start of Rosh Hashanah, finishing with a “shana tova” for the Jewish new year.
Macklemore courted controversy last week during his opening set on Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tourfor his Free Palestine messaging, with the Israeli-American Councilsubsequently sharing a petition calling to have him removed from the tour. During his set last Saturday, the rapper further continued with his Free Palestine message, further saying on stage that “to all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you.”
The rapper doubled down further on Monday, writing on social media that “wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial.”