David Draiman, lead singer for US hard rock superstars Disturbed and a staunch advocate for Israel, announced on Wednesday that he’ll be coming to Jerusalem next week to visit the Western Wall, and to light a candle at the Old City site of the terror attack that killed South African immigrant Eli Kay.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post from Hawaii, Draiman said he wanted to make a statement by coming to Israel after seeing the coverage of this week’s attack in which a Hamas terrorist opened fire on pedestrians in the Old City.
“The coverage was reprehensible in the vast majority of American and European media,” said Draiman. “It’s scandalous how they presented it. Headlines like ‘Palestinian shot dead.’ Well, why was the Palestinian shot dead? Because he was perpetrating a terrorist attack. I love how the context is always flipped around.”
Draiman, who noted that he has some 200 relatives living in Israel, said that his candle-lighting ceremony is intended to say that “we will not be intimidated, we’re not going anywhere. People need to learn to live with us [Jews].”
Draiman’s band has sold millions of albums since its 2000 debut, and in 2015, cracked the mainstream with a passionate version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” The band performed in Israel in 2019 at Rishon Lezion’s Live Park, where Draiman led the crowd in a rendition of “Hatikva.”