#SwiftiesForPalestine pressure singer to take sides

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Ahead of the Madrid leg of Taylor Swift’s globe-trotting Eras Tour, some fans had their minds on more than just the pop star’s set.

In the hours before her Wednesday concert, the hashtag #SwiftiesForPalestine was among the top trends on X, easily besting the hashtag for that evening’s show. Many posts called on concert attendees to bring signs or fly Palestinian flags at the event, hoping they’d catch Swift’s attention and encourage her to speak out.

The hashtag continued to spread Thursday morning with more than 133,000 posts, according to X’s trending page, with many of them coming from fan accounts that have posted about Swift for years.

It’s a sentiment that has been building for a while around many celebrities and Swift in particular, with her sizable and vocal fan base that, when mobilized, can be a formidable political force. In recent days, the scattered activism has boiled over into more palpable outrage — largely driven by Israel’s military offensive in Rafah and an airstrike this month that set a refugee camp aflame, with graphic pictures spreading online of the aftermath. The Israeli Defense Forces has said it was targeting two senior Hamas militants and that tent shelters were not in the immediate vicinity.

“Seeing all these devastating images and videos from Rafah has awakened something in all of us and we would love Taylor’s support. A lot of people with influence are speaking out and we see the effects this has,” said Sarah Smits, a Swiftie from Belgium who runs a fan account with more than 56,000 followers on X.

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