David Draiman, lead singer of the heavy metal band Disturbed, sang the Israeli national anthem during the band’s first concert in Israel on July 2.
The below video shows Draiman leading the more than 10,000 people in singing the anthem in unity, before transitioning to the song “Inside the Fire.”
According to the Jerusalem Post, Draiman spoke Hebrew at various points throughout the concert, which lasted more than two hours. He also wore a shirt honoring the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). During the show, Disturbed performed the song “Never Again” for the first time since 2011, a song discussing the horrors of the Holocaust.
Draiman, who is the descendant of Holocaust survivors and has family in Israel, slammed former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters in an interview with the Met Al Metal radio show before the concert.
“The man is a very sick man,” Draiman said, recalling how Waters claimed to have been booed during a concert in Israel calling for peace, even though video evidence showed otherwise.
“I don’t know what he did, drug-wise, during his life, but whatever he did fried a bunch of brain cells,” Draiman said. “The guy is not operating on all cylinders anymore.”
Draiman has criticized Waters in the past for his vehement support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
“The very notion that Waters and the rest of his Nazi comrades decide that this is the way to go ahead and foster change is absolute lunacy and idiocy,” Draiman said in a May 30 interview with a Disturbed Facebook fan page. “It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s only based on hatred of a culture and of a people in a society that has been demonized unjustifiably since the beginning of time.”
Draiman also said that the BDS movement singles out Israel because “there’s a special hatred that exists for the Jewish people in this world and it unfortunately can’t be explained. It’s something that has lasted and has been deep-seated for centuries and that’s part of our burden as a people, unfortunately.”
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