David Draiman, lead singer of the heavy metal band Disturbed, was met with boos during their support performance at Ozzy Osbourne's "The Beginning" tour finale, Variety reported. The incident, which occurred during Draiman's participation in a supergroup that was performing Black Sabbath's Sweet Leaf, comes as Draiman continues to openly voice his strong support for Israel amidst the ongoing war with the Hamas terrorist organization.
Draiman, known for his vocal stances on political issues, has not shied away from publicly backing Israel throughout the conflict. Despite the backlash from certain sections of the crowd, Draiman remained steadfast, with his support for Israel being well-documented across his social media platforms.
Responding to the boos, Draiman asked the hostile members of the crowd: "We gonna start this."
Draiman, who is Jewish, spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about his reaction to the October 7 massacre during his visit to Israel in June 2024.
"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."
The Disturbed singer stated that his visit was 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 had strong words for artists and singers like him who had hopped on the anti-Israel bandwagon in response to October 7. "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."