Macklemore Rides Anti-Israel Fervor Back to the Top of the Billboards

After a twelve year dry spell, Macklemore is breaking back into top ten billboards with his new hit singles, “F*** Up” and “Hind’s Hall,” released in 2024. Macklemore has always used his music to advocate for political causes, with varied success, and this time, Israel was his primary target.

Seizing on the cultural fervor against the so-called “apartheid state,” Macklemore’s latest hits push many common lies about Israel, calling it “a system that was designed by white supremacy” in the song “Hind’s Hall,” and engaging in Holocaust inversion in the single “F****** Up.” As with the cause itself, Macklemore’s accusations against Israel cave under scrutiny.

The claim that Israel is a “system of white supremacy” ignores the fact that many Jews themselves are not white. The record shows that Israel is committed to protecting all Jews, particularly those of color.

In 1984, Israel conducted Operation Moses to secretly airlift thousands of black Jews from Ethiopia to Israel. When the Ethiopian Jewish community found itself in danger from famine and the Ethiopian civil war, 8,000 Jews began evacuating to Israel on foot. One third of them perished en route while the rest landed in Sudan where they were placed in a refugee camp until their rescue. The next year, Operation Joshua saw another 500 Ethiopian Jews come to Israel, and Operation Solomon airlifted another 15,000.

Macklemore’s single also included a line, “New era ushered, but white supremacy is still in charge. Talkin’ colonizing Gaza from the White House lawn.” Such charges are easy to disprove. Since 1948, Israel has been a haven for all Jews. A journal reported in 2018 that Ashkenazi Jews were only 31.8 percent of the Jewish population in Israel. The remaining Jews come from the Sephardi, Mizrahi, Bukharian, Ethiopian communities, and others besides.

Testifying to the British parliament, former MP Theresa Villiers reported that approximately 865,000 Jews lived throughout the Arab world prior to the 1940s. In the wake of the foundation of Israel, about 850,000 of these Jews were ethnically cleansed from these lands. Many of these places had thriving Jewish communities going back thousands of years. Of these Jews who were ethnically cleansed, about 586,000 landed in Israel.

Villiers noted, “Between 1948 and 1972, pogroms and violent attacks were perpetrated in every Arab country against its Jewish residents. The ethnic cleansing of thousands of Jewish people from the Arab world in the mid-20th century was described by journalist Tom Gross as “systematic, absolute, and unprovoked.”

Because Israel has given citizenship to Jews that the Muslim world has ethnically cleansed, along with airlifting persecuted black Jews from Ethiopia to Israel, Jews of color make up a collective majority. Macklemore’s hamfisted claim that Israel is a “white supremacist project” is slanderous—or at least ignorant.

Macklemore’s statements don’t stop there, nor does the historical record that shows the error in his arguments. In his latest single, “F***** Up,” Macklemore engages in holocaust inversion—falsely equating or reversing roles by portraying Jews or Israel as perpetrators of atrocities in line with those committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The Jerusalem Post reported that one frame depicts a child from the West Bank juxtaposed next to a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto.

Macklemore has often used complicated social and geopolitical issues to boost his public image in an attempt to be a voice for racial justice in the U.S. His efforts have often met a lukewarm response.

The rapper’s song “White Privilege II” was described by BBC writer Gene Demby as “earnest” yet also “more than a little hamfisted.” Another writer likened Macklemore to all of her “woke ex-boyfriends,” all of whom were eager to prove how anti-racist they were and wearing her out with their over-performative wokeness.

After the release of “Hind’s Hall” last year, Macklemore received a scathing response on Instagram from Tal Oran, a Jew born in Iraq, who said that he’s “tired of being called a white colonizer.” Oran proceeded to accuse Macklemore of calling out “white colonialism” in North America and Israel for clicks, while ignoring radical Islam that has hurt minorities like Jews, Copts, and Assyrians.

Macklemore has been accused of antisemitism in the past. In 2014, he wore a mask during a performance that was widely called antisemitic.

He apologized at the time, claiming this was not his intent. Maybe this was a genuine mistake, yet “hamfisted” has proven to be a hallmark of Macklemore’s career.

Macklemore is a symptom of a broader problem in activism surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the rise of performative empathy, where activists prioritize personal notoriety over genuine advocacy, lies and disinformation spread rapidly, distorting the narrative of a conflict that demands truth and sensitivity. Criticizing Macklemore sends a clear message to other activists that this form of performative empathy is unacceptable and undermines meaningful advocacy.

Hamfisted arguments like Macklemore’s are often a hallmark of dialogue around Israel-Palestine. Both sides have these arguments. If we are concerned with truth, we must counter misinformation—especially when it comes from our own side.