Country music star Zach Bryan wore a "Free Palestine" T-shirt during a performance at Gillette Stadium on Friday night in what was widely interpreted as a gesture of defiance against the venue's pro-Israel owner Robert Kraft. Weeks earlier, the New England Patriots owner drew international backlash when he banned the rapper Macklemore…
Page D2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 3 October 2026
THE LEDGER
Kraft's humanitarian aid for Palestinians funds Friends of the IDF, the same shirt message he banned Macklemore for.

As it ran on the front
My nephew's in his second year of law school now, nonprofit clinic track, and I called him Tuesday with a question about a word. "Humanitarian" — what does that actually mean, in writing? He laughed and said it means whatever's in the filing, Uncle Lou, and he'd have to see the filing to tell me. He's got more patience with paperwork than I ever managed, so I figured he was the one to ask.
So I drove over — the car took three tries, that belt's been on my list for a month — and we sat on his porch while he pulled the paperwork up on his phone. Robert Kraft's charity, Kraft's LLC: donations to Friends of the IDF, donations to AIPAC's super PAC. The Intercept ran that September 18th, off the tax forms themselves. I told him I thought Kraft's donations were supposed to be Palestinian aid. He said that's what Kraft's own statement called them.…
…(cont) There's a second statement too, the one where Kraft told Ed Sheeran's people he'd match a two-million-dollar donation "to aid in the region." So there's a dollar figure Kraft said was headed to aid in the region, and there's a filing that says where Kraft's aid money actually lands. Has anybody set those two pages side by side? I haven't, not all the way.
Dave Portnoy went on the radio and backed the ban on Macklemore "1000%" — his figure, not mine. A thousand of a hundred, for a T-shirt and a sentence. I asked my nephew what the going rate usually runs for banning a man from a stadium over something he said onstage. He said he hadn't come across that one filed anywhere either.
My wife asked what had me so worked up, standing out in the yard with nothing to show for it. I told her I was trying to work out how one word covers two different places in the same calendar year. She said most press releases do that. Does this one have a filing attached, same as the rest?
Friday night, Zach Bryan played that same stadium. Same message, stitched across a shirt. No ban came down, not that made the papers. I called my nephew again to ask if there'd been a new one filed since September. He said not that he'd seen.
I called him a third time Wednesday evening, right as he was headed out the door, and asked whether the next disclosure — whenever Kraft's people file it — lands that match money anywhere different than the last filing did. He said he'd have to wait and see it post, same as the rest of us. That's the thing about filings, he said — they only tell you where the money was, not where it's going next.
Oh — hold on, before you go. One more. The stadium that wouldn't let a man say "Free Palestine" onstage is the same stadium whose owner's humanitarian donations the Intercept traced to Friends of the IDF. Which of those two was actually the thing that got banned?
“So the man bans a rapper's shirt, calls it keeping politics off the field, and his own tax forms show the "aid" check cleared for Friends of the IDF and AIPAC's super PAC. That's not a donation, that's a laundromat with a press box. Zach Bryan wears the same two words and the only thing that changed is whose name is on the filing.”
“Look, Robert Kraft owns the stadium, he can set the dress code on his own property, that's just how a lease works. And matching a humanitarian donation is generosity, full stop, that's not something you go around auditing — actually, hold on, someone did audit it, that's not the word I wanted. Did I say audit? I meant appreciate, people should really just appreciate it more.”
The receipts
Country singer Zach Bryan wore a shirt with the words “Free Palestine” on it during a Friday concert at Gillette Stadium. This follows the stadium owner’s decision to block Macklemore from performing at the venue because of his pro-Palestine advocacy.
‘You’re free to disagree with me’
· Robert Kraft Claims His Donations Help Palestinians. Turns Out He’s Funding Friends of the IDF. from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
· Dave Portnoy defends Kraft over Macklemore expulsion: ‘He owns the stadium, it’s his house’ from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Macklemore, Ed Sheeran ask Robert Kraft to donate to Palestinian humanitarian aid from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Macklemore and Robert Kraft release dueling statements on humanitarian aid donations from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Macklemore says Robert Kraft, stadium owners fueled his ouster from Ed Sheeran's tour over call to 'free Palestine' from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
· Macklemore Announces 'Free Palestine Tour' With Dates in Paris, London, and Dublin from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.