David Draiman, the frontman for the heavy metal band Disturbed, sat down with us at the Arutz Sheva-Israel National News studio in Jerusalem.
This is Draiman's first visit to Israel since the Hamas massacre of October 7, though he wanted to come earlier to show his support. "I've been a little busy, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. I wanted to come as soon as I possibly could. I've been meaning to come for a while. I've been meaning to visit with my grandmother, with my family. Unfortunately, I didn't make it in time. She passed just about a week and a half before I got here," he said.
Draiman visited the sites of the massacre in southern Israel. He described the feelings he experienced there as "nightmarish."
"I've been obsessed since this horror happened to our people. Every single bit of footage, every single bit of information, anything I could get my hands on, I've seen. But seeing the destruction in-person and hearing the accounts from the families and seeing the bloodstains and seeing the bullet holes and seeing the charred walls and the remnants, the memories destroyed and the lives wiped out," he said.
"I couldn't give enough of myself to them," he added. "I couldn't give them enough empathy and enough compassion. It's left a mark. I've had nightmares every night since I visited."
Despite the nightmares, Draiman is satisfied with his decision to come to Israel and see the sites of the massacre. "I think that all of us, as a people, as a nation, need to do everything we can right now and provide as much of ourselves to those who need it as possible."
The Disturbed singer stated that his visit has become part of his "pro-Israel" activism. "It's pro-humanity, it's pro-decency, it's pro-morality. The world has become bizarro world to me. I don't recognize it anymore."
Draiman stated that in his opinion, the "most shocking aspect of what October 7th showed all of us is that we can't count on our friends, at least not most of them or the ones that we thought were our friends."
"They're willfully ignorant, the vast majority of them," he said. "Even when faced with undeniable proof, they try to refute it, they try to poke holes in it, they say it's AI-generated, they say it's some Mossad plan or something like that. It's incredible because Hamas and the 'civilian' Palestinian who participated with Hamas on October 7 - I don't know that you can call them civilians anymore, even if they weren't official Hamas soldiers. If they ran through the gate, if they ransacked, if they pillaged, if they helped take hostages, if they also killed other innocent civilians, they're not civilians anymore."
"When they spent so much time and effort to document their horrors, to document their crimes, out of pride, out of bloodlust, out of this barbaric hatred that has transcended generations ... They went to such great lengths to live stream it, to ZOOM it, to put it on every format, to put it on Facebook live, we have the documentation that they themselves were proud enough to show the world, because they couldn't be prouder than to get on the phone and to tell their parents at home, 'Hey I just killed a bunch of Jews,'" he observed.
"Joseph Goebbels never dreamed of the impact that social media and the modern-day media have on the global mindset. It's incredible. It's brainwashing on a massive global level. You don't have to be right. You don't have to be correct. You don't have to be accurate. You can even be wrong after-the-fact and correct yourself. It doesn't matter anymore, because the lie travels around the world at the speed of light, ten times faster than the truth. Those who are already so rabidly against us, who have been taught for generations that Jews are responsible for all the evil of this world, are only too eager to lap it all up," he said.
He continued, "There's this horrific state of affairs where people who used to be a force for good have been completely brainwashed. And what's good is bad now, what's bad is good, nothing makes sense anymore. The world is upside-down."
Draiman has words for artists and singers like him who have hopped on the anti-Israel bandwagon. "It's very, very easy to be sucked up into a trend. Some of these 'artists' have been doing this for a long time, since way before October 7. Some of them only joined the cause [after] seeing the devastation that has been wrought in Gaza due to Hamas post-October 7. For those, I would say, I appreciate that you think that your heart is in the right place and that you think you're on the right side of history, but for there to be a real future for Jews or Palestinians or anyone in the region, this vicious cycle of indoctrinating the next generation to kill the next generation has to stop. And it's only going to stop if the genocidal death cult that is in charge in the Gaza Strip is removed from power."
He also called on those who are silent to speak out for what is right and for Jewish people who are not speaking out to stand up for themselves. "It's clutch time. Jews have a very bad habit of thinking that if they just lay low and pretend that nothing is happening, that the crisis will pass and everything will be fine. That's happened since the beginning of time. That happened during the Exodus, for God's sake. There were Jews who didn't leave Egypt. There were Jews that stayed in Nazi Germany, thinking they would never be one of the ones pulled onto the trains and taken to the camps. There are Jews in modern-day society that think, 'Well, if I just go ahead and I follow the narrative, and I go ahead and I stay silent and I am one of the 'good Jews,' I won't be lumped in with the rest of this hatred.' And the sad reality of it is that people who blame Jews for every single crime in existence and every evil on this planet have been doing it for a long time and will continue doing it, and they don't care what side you're on. They care about the fact that you're a Jew."
Draiman has recorded a new version of the Simon and Garfunkel song, "The Sound of Silence," which Disturbed famously covered in 2015. He described the process of producing this new, emotional version of the song.
"Noah and the Hellscape Choir here in Israel, some of whom are family members and friends of many of the people who lost their lives and the Nova festival, they did an amazing A cappella musical rendition of the instrumentation for the song, and I sang along with them. We shot a video of it at the Nova festival site, and it was incredibly moving. It was very difficult to get through, to be perfectly honest. I think it's going to be something truly poignant and truly amazing. The whole idea is to showcase the silence of the world post the Nova massacre."
"It's incredible to me that here was a music festival that was supposed to be an escape from horror, an escape from everything that is wrong with this world, and they were attacked by everything that is wrong in this world and kidnapped and slaughtered by everything that is wrong with this world," he said.
He agreed with the description of the global response to October 7 as 'The Sound of Silence of the World' "post-10-7, post the Nova massacre. That silence is unforgivable."
Draiman called his visit to Israel "helpful" for himself as well. "It really has been. iT's been very cathartic. The whole thing, I needed it. I needed to do it. There's such an enduring sense of helplessness that all Jews, I think, all over the world after 10/7 are feeling. And to come back here and to remember why we have our home and why it's so important and the role that it plays in the modern era and that we are no longer Jews with trembling knees, is incredibly important."
"Community, family, unity, and perseverance in the middle of adversity, that is Israeli, that is Jewish. And that is a beautiful thing to bear witness to," Draiman said.
Draiman noted that it has been difficult for him and his band as his Jewish heritage and support for Israel are well-known. "I thank [my bandmates] from the bottom of my heart. I know it's not easy having a guy like me. I'm a haunted guy. It would probably be a lot easier if I was just vanilla and I shied away from stuff like this. But I just can't."
"The music, we've always let speak on its own," he said. "I don't think I have the luxury anymore of removing myself from the equation. I'm in it. I'll try to do it as responsibly as I can, with as much decency and dignity as I can."
He noted that the IDF does not target civilians and that "we have the lowest civilian-to-combatant ratio in modern history if you actually look up the data online, if you talk to people like John Spencer and a bunch of others who are experts in the field. But the truth doesn't matter. The narrative is more powerful."
"I don't want any children to die, not ours, not theirs. But the murderers and the maniacs who perpetuated this horrific crime, and who continue to hold the Palestinian people as well as our people hostage to a crazy indoctrination of hatred that happens generation after generation, has to be stopped.
"Hamas is responsible for every single death, every one. They hide behind their people. Yahya Sinwar has said over and over again, he wants more and more of his people dead. He uses them as pawns. It's working on a global level. He knows it. We have to not fall for it. We have to be as careful as possible, and do our diligence to the largest extent we can. And we have to end Hamas. We have to give a future for this region to the people of this region. There's been war going on for far too long," he said.
Draiman concluded with the Hebrew words, "Am Yisrael Chai," meaning "The People of Israel Live."