“I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel at Nova music festival on Oct. 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain,” Ed Sheeran said in the opening minutes of his Philadelphia concert Saturday night, nearly three years after October 7, while answering “the question of where I stand in the situation in Israel and Palestine.” Sheeran described “what is happening in Gaza” as “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” without naming who is responsible. He said his “heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, of children’s lives.” The singer also highlighted the “systemic injustice” unfolding in the West Bank, again without identifying Israel as the occupying power responsible for that illegal and brutal military occupation. Addressing the removal of Macklemore from his stadium tour and the ensuing backlash, Sheeran said: “I’ve had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I’m so sorry. I don’t want to disappoint fans, and I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet.” Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been livestreamed to the world for 1,080 days.