You have commented 375 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Israel-Palestine-Jordan
There Is No Palestine to 'Free'
2026-09-21
[Federalist] Pro-Palestinian protesters descended on Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia over the weekend, waving flags and chanting "Free Palestine" outside Ed Sheeran's concert, one week after Macklemore got pulled from Sheeran's Loop Tour entirely. The rapper had used his opening slot at MetLife Stadium to push the same slogan from the stage, and according to Macklemore, Sheeran told him that Patriots owner Robert Kraft rallied other stadium owners behind an ultimatum: keep Macklemore on the bill, lose the venue. Sheeran, for his part, says the call wasn't his, calls the whole conflict "a human tragedy" on both sides, and has mostly tried to stay out of the blast radius.
That was then. More recently, the coward has gone all in on the Palestine genocide side rather than contradict people he wants to share the stage with, no matter their propensity for appearing on stage in a giant hook-nose, making the Nazi salute — stage-owners be damned.
I want to set the tour drama aside for a moment, because underneath the chanting and the flags is a premise nobody in that crowd seems to have actually examined: free Palestine from what, exactly, to become what, exactly?

There has never been a sovereign Palestinian state. Not once, not ever, not under any government, any constitution, any flag flying over internationally recognized borders. The land in question passed from the Ottoman Empire to the British Mandate to a 1947 partition plan the surrounding Arab nations rejected outright, choosing war instead. From 1948 to 1967, the West Bank sat under Jordanian control and Gaza under Egyptian control — not under Palestinian self-governance, and neither Jordan nor Egypt showed the slightest interest in creating one during those nineteen years when they held the exact territory activists now insist must be "freed." Today's Palestinian Authority holds observer status at the United Nations, not full member-state recognition, because full statehood has never actually existed to lose.

Contrast that with the land's other history, the one "Free Palestine" chants tend to skip past entirely. The United Kingdom of Israel under Saul, David, and Solomon. The divided Kingdom of Israel in the north and Kingdom of Judah in the south after that. The Hasmonean Kingdom, won back through actual armed revolt against a Greek empire trying to stamp out Jewish worship by force. And now the modern State of Israel, re-established in 1948 and internationally recognized within about 11 minutes of declaring independence. Four distinct eras of Jewish sovereignty stretching back 3,000 years, plus the modern state — five separate governments, on the same land, predating any Arab national claim to it by millennia. That's not propaganda. That's archaeology, ancient text, and a documentary record longer than most nations on earth can produce for their own founding.

Ed Sheeran says Gaza situation ‘unjustifiable’ amid ongoing outcry over Macklemore’s ouster

[IsraelTimes] Singer calls Hamas October 7 attack ‘horrific,’ says ‘what is happening in Gaza is catastrophic,’ as small group protests outside show over rapper’s removal for anti-Israel remarks.
Posted by:Besoeker

#1  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2026-09-21 12:34  

00:00