Robert Kraft Did the Right Thing  

New England Patriots owner, philanthropist and committed Jew, Robert Kraft, did the right thing in barring rapper Macklemore from performing as an opening act on Ed Sheeran’s “Loop Tour” following Macklemore’s pro-Palestinian statements made on stage at a New Jersey concert.  Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium where the tour was scheduled to stop, also rallied other owners of similar venues to issue an ultimatum to Ed Sheeran: drop Macklemore, or lose the venues. Most of the other stadium owners joined Kraft and blocked Macklemore as well.

Kraft has come under a lot of criticism by those who defended Macklemore’s tight to express his opinion.  They cite the US Constitution’s 1^st amendment which protects five core personal freedoms: religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly, and the right to petition the government.

To be sure, Macklemore has the right to express any personal opinion.  Nevertheless, the owner of the venue where Macklemore chooses to do so also has the right not to make that venue available to him if the owner has a different viewpoint on the subject which right is also protected by the 1^st Amendment.

Even more than that, Kraft is well aware that 372 years after the first Jews landed in New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1654, history and antisemitism have finally caught up with American Jewry and he is prepared to stand against the rampant development of antisemitism.  Every civilization since the beginning of time has been seemingly hell bent on destroying Jews and in 2026 we find ourselves, once again facing enemies using their lies about Israel as a catalyst to express their hateful venom.

It is interesting to note that the oldest known reference to Israel as a people is the Menepte Stele, located in the recently opened new Egyptian museum in Cairo.  The stele bears an ancient Egyptian inscription, circa 1208 BCE, during the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah. The text records a military campaign in Canaan and includes the line: “Israel is laid waste; his seed is not.” From that point 3,800 years ago, it was all downhill as every future society joined the “let’s get rid of the Jews” club.

Later generations of Egyptians under other Pharaohs, then Romans, Greeks, and Persians, were eventually joined by the Europeans.  The massacres of the Jews of York in England, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms in the pale of European settlement and the European Holocaust, were all focused on one objective, “let’s get rid of the Jews.”

 Yet we are still here, nowhere near the numbers we should be but still here.  Demographers will tell you that with a relatively slow annual growth rate of 0.1%, the two million Jews who left Egypt during the Exodus would be roughly 66.1 million people today, whereas our worldwide population is actually just over 15 million. That’s what happens when you are a people whom every society is bent on destroying and tries to make it happen.

But Kraft is saying America is different.  America is not Europe in 1939 and will not become a North American Anatevka, like the one portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof.  Jews have been part and parcel of the very essence of America since its inception and have made the country better because of their presence.  After all, it was Jews who provided critical financing for the revolution of 1776, and then went on to build businesses, cultural institutions, universities, hospitals, research centers as well as major industries including Los Angeles’ cinema and entertainment ecosystem.  Kraft, by taking a stand and saying no, makes it clear that this time Jews are prepared to fight back.

In the 2023 biographical drama film Golda, Helen Mirren, who played former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, recounts a childhood memory of her father hiding their family from violent Cossacks in Ukraine, concluding with the dramatic declaration: “I am not that little girl hiding in the cellar.”   The statement was uttered during the intense, high-stakes diplomatic negotiations of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As the former Soviet Union began backing Arab forces and threatened to escalate its military involvement, Kissinger warned Meir of the severe global implications if Israel completely destroys Egypt’s surrounded Third Army.  Meir defiantly rejects backing down out of fear, recalling the haunting childhood memory of antisemitic violence in her birthplace of Kiev, Ukraine.  Effectively, Kraft, by his actions, is saying something similar to the entertainment community.

In justifying his actions, Robert Kraft said Gillette Stadium is committed to providing a “welcoming environment for all guests” and will not provide a “platform for hate speech.”  Kraft explicitly cited Macklemore’s “recent actions” and a “broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery” which he described as deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.

The American Jewish Community needs more Robert Krafts, people who are willing to stand up to hate, to confront abject lies and are prepared to cause legal financial harm to those who are guilty of promoting antisemitism regardless of how it is cloaked.  History may well have caught up with American Jewry but the community is not powerless and thus should use every available asset to defend itself against its domestic enemies.