Capitulation

On Friday, Musician Ed Sheeran decided to bow to the far-left mob by offering up a semi-apology for having done nothing wrong. On September 5, at a show in New Jersey, Macklemore, one of Sheeran’s opening acts, decided to use Ed’s platform to push a far-left, pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian propaganda, accusing Israel of committing genocide and shouting “Free Palestine”. Robert Kraft who owns Gilette Stadium where Sheeran’s next shows were to be held, gave Sheeran an ultimatum, get rid of Macklemore or your concerts will be cancelled. Sheeran fired Macklemore, and his two other openers quit in solidarity. Initially, Sheeran said that "Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter's decision, it was not mine… There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics - my audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds. Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum." He appeared to take a fairly reasonable position on the situation.

That explanation did not satisfy the mob. He was attacked relentlessly, threatened and attempted to be cancelled. So, Sheeran, at his first concert back, broke down in tears on stage and offered a semi-apology and made a political statement, saying, “What happened in Israel at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.” Unjustifiable? So, Israel is not justified – does not have the right – to go after the Hamas terrorists who committed the atrocities on October 7 which he said in the same statement was “horrific”? Israel is supposed to sit there and take probably the worst of the thousands of Islamic terrorist attacks they have already suffered through?

Israel was one hundred percent justified to go into Gaza and go to war with Hamas. Sheeran also called what was happening in Gaza, “disproportionate”, as if this is some sort of game of you hit us and we hit you back. If he wants to deal in proportion, then the proportionate response would have been for the IDF to go into Gaza, target and murder 1,200 innocent Palestinians by chopping the heads off of babies, shooting elderly people in the heads, gang raping hundreds of women, dragging their lifeless bodies through the streets and then kidnapping 200 civilians. That would be the proportionate response to October 7. The IDF did not do that. They did not target innocent civilians like the sub-human terrorists do. They targeted the sub-human terrorists who were using innocent Palestinian civilians as human shields.

There is no genocide in Gaza. That’s a lie. Every death in Gaza is 100% the fault of Hamas, and the rest of the world who did not stand in unison with Israel in the wake of October 7 to eliminate Hamas.  Hamas spent tens of billions of dollars of humanitarian aid – money that was supposed to go to the Palestinians people for food and healthcare – to build elaborate terrorism tunnels into Israel. That shows you how much Hamas cares about the Palestinian civilians – they prioritized murdering Jews over feeding the Palestinians and taking care of their sick. Then on October 7, 2023, Hamas committed one of the most vicious and deadly terrorist attacks against Israel, and then ran back into Gaza, hiding behind innocent Palestinian civilians, setting up their operations underneath hospitals, schools, and Mosques. Once again, that shows us how much Hamas cares about the Palestinians – using them as human shields. And then, Hamas immediately demanded a ceasefire from Israel as if they care about peace. When Israel rightfully rejected the ceasefire, Israel is now portrayed as the bad guy because they did not agree to a fake peace treaty from murderous thugs who just murdered 1,200 innocent Israeli citizens, and will violate the peace accord as soon as they see an opportunity to kill more Jews.

This has all been orchestrated – the terrorist attack on October 7 and the fake outrage about the Palestinians has all been choreographed to turn public opinion against Israel, and paint them as the bad guys. How do I know? Less than 48 hours after October 7, there were already pro-Palestinian protests occurring at colleges around the United States, like Columbia and Harvard calling for a ceasefire.

I’m tired of listening to the people who follow the religious ideology which has been the motivation for over 65,000 terrorist attacks worldwide since 1979, playing the victim. Muslims never chastise the people within their religion for the terrorist attacks they commit on a daily basis or the honor killings or the gang rapes or the subjugation of women or the killing of gay people, they only chastise the people who call out and try to stop the extreme violence and intolerance of their Islamic faith. 

Israel is not the bad guy. The old saying goes - if the Muslims put their weapons down, there would be no more war in the Middle East; if the Jewish people put their weapons down, there’d be no more Jewish people in the Middle East. The only reason why there is not peace in the Middle East is because the Muslims hate the Jews and want to eliminate every Jewish person from the planet. The only group of people who are committing genocide in the world today are the Muslims; they are calling for the genocide of the Jews – that is what “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” means. And when they are done with the Jews, the Christians are next. Tens of thousands of Christians have already been murdered in places like Nigeria by Muslims, and celebrities like Macklemore, do not say a word about it. 30,000 Iranian citizens who were protesting for the basic freedoms that we in the United States take for granted, were slaughtered by the Iranian regime over three-day span last year, and celebrities who pretend to be standing up for free Palestine, have not spoken out against that atrocity.

According to the Israeli war room, the Palestinians carried out 2,335 terrorist attacks against Israel, just in the first seven months of 2026. This is what Muslims do. They commit atrocities, and then turn around and vilify the victims of those atrocities when they respond to the Islamic violence. This is not much different than the Crusades. The Crusades were a response to 400 years of Islamic conquest – murdering, raping, conquering. The Crusaders were not the bad guys, the Muslims were. The Muslims killed tens of millions of people throughout the Middle East during their reign of terror. Muslims have absolutely no conscience. They immediately forget every bad thing that they’ve ever done, and only point to anything that could be considered bad that someone else has done to them.

Muslims will point out that over 20,000 children have been killed by Israeli forces in this war. Since most of the information that comes out of Gaza from its leadership, is propaganda, it’s hard to trust their numbers. But let’s say it’s true that 20,000 children have been killed, they’re counting anybody under the age of 18 as a child. Now, most of the people under the age of 18 who have been killed in Gaza, have been young men in their teens, 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds, who have been radicalized by Hamas and are combatants in the war that they started. Those are the “children” that are being killed that we are supposed to feel sympathy for because they are “children”.

But these same people who want us to feel sympathy and view Israel is being evil for killing 17-year-old “children”, say it’s legal for a grown man to marry a six-year-old and consummate the marriage. So, in the context of a Muslim adult man wanting to have sex with a six-year-old girl, the six-year-old shouldn’t be seen as an innocent vulnerable child, but as consenting adult. But when it comes to the IDF killing a 17-year-old radicalized military combatant in a war, they want to count him as an innocent child. That sums up Hamas, and every Islamic terrorist organization, and the Islamic faith as a whole. They will lie, and manipulate, and obfuscate, to make themselves the victims and you the villains. Islam is the most violent, and the most murderous, and the most terroristic religion on the planet by far. We never hear people within the Islamic faith, speaking out to condemn the violent nature of their own religion. They are either part of the violence or they tacitly approve of the violence

Every Western person who is standing up for “Free Palestine” is either knowingly complicit with the Islamic terrorists or are so blinded by their own virtue that they cannot see the true injustice in Palestine. Israel is not holding the Palestinians captive, Hamas is. Hamas runs Gaza. Israel turned Gaza over to the Palestinians in 2006, and Hamas has run it ever since. The reason why Palestinians are being killed in Gaza is because of people like Macklemore. Hamas knows that the only way they can win is if they turn public opinion in the West against the Jewish people, and the only way they can do that is if they are able to produce a big enough body count of dead “innocent” Palestinians to blame on the Jews. That is why they are using Palestinians as human shields, and that’s why they are counting Hamas combatants as innocent children. “Free Palestine” is an indictment on Hama and Islam, not on Israel.

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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.