David Draiman, the lead singer of the platinum selling hard-rock band Disturbed, is using his voice to defend Israel. Draiman contends that mainstream media is biased in its portrayal of Israel, and is setting the stage for a new holocaust. From Sharona Schwartz at The Blaze:
“It’s interesting how the media loved the state of Israel and loved our story when we were the underdog, and now that we’re no longer the underdog, now that we have the ability and the military might and the intestinal fortitude to always defend ourselves and defend our people and defend our right to exist, they damn us for that and they condemn us for that.”
He describes the media coverage of Israel as “shameful, unbelievably biased” and “progressive, liberal propaganda.” Draiman said that news organizations including CNN, Reuters and the BBC “jump at the opportunity to chastise and crucify Israel every chance they get while ignoring and making excuses for every single transgression and every single war crime committed by these terrorists.”
You don’t hear that Israel is “the last bastion of freedom and true liberty that exists in the entire region and you’re spitting in its face,” Draiman said. He warned that the “single greatest most powerful catalyst for hatred that exists in the world is their [the media’s] skewed views being perpetuated all over the planet.”
For Draiman, it’s personal:
“Both of my grandparents on my mother's side of the family are survivors of the camps. My grandfather was on wheelbarrow duty in Bergen-Belsen. It was his job to cart bodies to the crematorium. My grandmother was a little girl in Auschwitz. She survived being in line to the gas chamber on three separate occasions. Since she was a little girl, they let her crawl underneath their legs to the back of the line on three separate times, and after the third time the camp was liberated.
And you just see everything that's happening in the media, you see people like Ahmadinejad who are out there trying to stir up a campaign of Jewish conspiracy. And I look at my grandmother, who still has the tattoo on her left forearm, and I realize that an entire generation, the last generation of people who are living who can say "This actually happened to me," are about to be lost to us.
And I just wanted to do something that let it be known that this is something that was real, something that happened, and it not only affected the Jewish people, it affected many people, but it's certainly something that shouldn't be forgotten.”
Draiman strongly supports Israel, but is saddened for the loss of life on both sides, including Palestinian children who are “taught from the minute they’re born to hate” and to be “instruments of jihad."
Draiman. who describes himself as a social liberal, is very opinionated on social media, following several conservative and pro-Israel blogs such as the Algemeiner, Truth Revolt and StandWithUs. He recently posted and retweeted criticism of the EU court ordering Hamas be removed from its terrorism blacklist, Harvard University dining services reportedly boycotting the Israeli company SodaStream and Palestinians glorifying terrorism.
Draiman told Israel Radio that even though the business advisers of his rock group suggested “maybe I shouldn’t stick my neck out so much” politically, he chose to continue being outspoken on his personal social media accounts, making clear he doesn’t speak on behalf of the band. The singer said he has some 200 relatives in Israel, including his grandmother and brother.
His song “Never Again” is a message to Holocaust deniers and Draiman cannot believe the hatred of today is “spreading like wildfire, I’ve never seen anti-Semitism like this that exists in my lifetime…At the end of the day, the anti-Semites are anti-Semities and they’re going to hate Jews no matter what we do, and unfortunately the floodgates have been open.”
“I will always be a defender of my family and my people and there’s not going to be anyone out there no matter what kind of threats or whatever kind of hatred that’s spewed that’s ever going to dissuade me from it,” he said.
