Disturbed frontman David Draiman has blasted Roger Waters for his continued support of a cultural boycott of Israel.
Draiman called the former Pink Floyd singer “delusional” over his support for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign, which aims to pressure Israel to end the occupation of Palestine, among other things.
"The man is so delusional, the man is so wrapped up in his own psychosis and his own hatred disguised as this quote-unquote BDS campaign," Draiman, whose maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust, told Israel’s Met Al Metal radio show. "The man is a very sick man.
"He performed [in Israel] and he made up stories about it – incorrect stories. I don't know if you've heard him try to go ahead and say how, during that one performance, he tried to address the Israeli crowd and ask for peace and supposedly was met with negativity and boos, and whatever, and then they go ahead and show the video from the actual performance so many years ago, and the Israeli fans were cheering for peace.
“I don't know what he did, drug-wise, during his life, but whatever he did fried a bunch of brain cells. The guy is not operating on all cylinders anymore."
Disturbed play their very first show in Israel today (July 2).
Imagine being told that you’ll lose your job with a state government unless you pledge not to boycott Saudi Arabia in response to its policies—such as the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Or that you will not be hired by that state unless you promise for the term of your contact that you won’t advocate a boycott of goods made in, say, Iran because you oppose their policies, such as their support of the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon?
What would be your reaction? I’m guessing, like most, you would say this law is not just outrageous but unconstitutional and un-American. And you would be 100 percent correct.
But when Texas and other states have passed those exact laws that result in people being fired from their jobs or not hired simply because they want to protest Israeli policies under Benjamin Netanyahu, we barely hear a peep. There should be no exception to our First Amendment rights because certain politicians disagree with our political views.
You see, in 2017, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature passed a bill signed into law by Texas’s GOP governor Greg Abbott that required anyone seeking to do business with Texas to certify that he or she “does not currently boycott Israel” and “will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract.”
