by Jake Wallis Simons, Telegraph
The singer is about to discover that his critics don’t want an apology – they want to destroy him
You can’t help but feel sorry for Ed Sheeran. Lesser musicians would have buckled far sooner.
He remained defiant as his supporting acts and even his backing musicians abandoned him, taking to the stage solo. But eventually, he cracked. What is he? JK Rowling?
Last night, in a tearful mea culpa, he read a prepared statement to his audience in which he acknowledged “making mistakes”, though to be fair to him, he didn’t stoop to the indignity of listing them.
Instead, he came clean about his feelings on the conflict between Israel and jihadism. “What happened in Israel at a music festival on October 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain,” he said. “What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.”
So that cleared that up, then. The man is against the killing of innocents, whatever side they are on. Is that really such a radical position? Did it really justify the outrage? Evidently, it did.
For the great hordes of Palestine fanatics that occupy the music industry, media and the arts, and our university and education system, any sympathy for Israel is too much.
By that measure, Sheeran is a supporter of the Jewish state – sorry, a Zio baby killer – just because he disapproved of the jihadi murder, rape, mutilation, kidnap and necrophilia that was unleashed upon hundreds of innocent festival-goers three years ago.
Sheeran’s speech had all the characteristics of a Soviet show trial, only with no uniforms and better lighting. One worries for him more than ever now. Giving the mob a bit of blood only makes it ravenous for more.