Disturbed frontman David Draiman recently made a guest appearance on “The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan,” a podcast hosted by The Smashing Pumpkins vocalist Billy Corgan. During the extensive interview, the two musicians engaged in a heavy conversation regarding the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, with Draiman offering a detailed defense of his vocal pro-Israel stance and his highly publicized decision to sign an IDF artillery shell in early 2024.
To provide context for his deeply rooted perspective, Draiman detailed his family’s history, pointing to the devastation of the Hol*caust and their long-standing ties to the region.
“I come from a family of Hol*caust survivors. 90% of my mother’s side of the family was wiped out by the N*zis. My grandfather was in Dachau. My grandmother was in Auschwitz. My grandmother and my grandfather on my father’s side have been living in the land of Israel since before it was established as a state, since the early 1900s we’ve had family there. My grandmother is Yemenite. Her family immigrated from them. My grandfather’s Polish. He came in from Poland with the rest of his family. Everyone was escaping violence. Everyone was escaping the destruction and the horrors of the Hol*caust,” David said (as transcribed by theprp).
The singer emphasized that the October 7 attacks marked a severe turning point. Despite his firm support for Israel’s military response, he pushed back against the idea that he lacks empathy for the civilian toll in Gaza.
“I’m not trying to be a tribalist, to be honest. I’m trying to be a humanist. I truly do have compassion for the Palestinian people. Truly, truly do. A lot of what everyone, for the past couple years, since I visited Israel after October 7th to pay my respects and support however I could, and just meet with families of the hostages — I’ve been blessed to actually befriend some of the former hostages over the course of the past couple years. It’s been a very surreal experience.”
The conversation inevitably shifted to the intense backlash Draiman faced after a photo circulated showing him writing “F**k Hamas” on an Israeli artillery bomb near the Gaza border.
“But what everybody loves to pick on is there’s this one wonderful picture of me signing an artillery shell by artillery unit that was on the Gaza border that I went to visit during that stay. And they’re like, ‘Oh, well, you signed the you signed a bomb. The bomb absolutely, definitely ki**ed children or whatever else,'” he noted.
He defended the action as a gesture of support for a nation’s right to defend itself against a governing terrorist organization.
“And that’s what everybody will go after after me about. But you know, here’s the thing. Believe it or not, contrary to public opinion, Jews are allowed to fight back. And if there is a gen*cidal organization on your border who is constantly launching rockets day after day, who’s committing the worst slaughter of Jews since the Hol*caust…”
The geopolitical reality of the region is highly complex, rooted in decades of historical conflict dating back to the 1948 Nakba, which saw the mass displacement of Palestinian Arabs. Today, the international community remains sharply divided. While nations like the United States and Israel classify Hamas as a te**orist organization, several international bodies, including the United Nations, have strongly condemned Israel’s military operations, with various scholars and humanitarian organizations labeling the massive civilian death toll in Gaza as a genocide.
For Draiman, the conflict is not an abstract political debate, but an immediate personal crisis. He shared harrowing accounts from his own circle.
“I have calls from my mother crying to me in her safe room, in her bomb shelter as rockets are coming down. I have friends of mine who barely survived the Nova Music Festival ma**acre because they decided to hide in a pile of garbage while friends of theirs were being r**ed around them and mutilated, who barely escaped with their lives, who were shot in the process of escape. You know, people don’t understand there are human beings behind all of this destruction. There are lives. There’s real consequences. This isn’t some movie. This isn’t some storyline.”
He also directed sharp criticism toward international organizations operating in Gaza, accusing them of complicity in radicalizing the local population.
“[…] there are UN organizations like UNRA who facilitate this hatred [of Jews], whose schools have teaching material that is pure incitement, that have cartoon characters that glorify the m*rder of Jews. That whole aspect of society needs to be deradicalized. It’s comparable to what needed to happen to N*zi Germany after World War II.”
When asked if he would sign the bomb again, Draiman doubled down, arguing that the eradication of Hamas is a necessary step for peace in the region.
“Billy. I would sign every single piece of military equipment in existence if it meant that Hamas was finally eradicated and that the Palestinian people had a real chance at a real future. Extremism is a cancer for anyone, for any part of society or civilization. And they have been raised to hate and slaughter and lust over the murder of Jews since the day they were born. That’s unfortunate.”
He concluded the segment by expressing frustration with the global reaction to Israel’s military retaliation.
“You have an entire group of people who live, breathe, and die for one thing, and that is to to to slaughter Jews. And for anyone to have an issue, They always have an issue when you fight back. It’s never… everyone loves dead Jews. Everyone loves persecuted Jews. Everyone loves to feel bad. But God forbid we actually raise our fist to defend ourselves, then we’re the bad guy. You know, the insinuation that every single piece of military equipment that was used in that conflict ki**ed innocents is absolutely preposterous. You’re talking about even if you take Hamas’s health ministries numbers at face value, you’re talking about the lowest civilian to combatant ratio in modern warfare history. You’re talking about a war that needed to be waged in an urban environment. In an urban environment where not only is martyrdom glorified, but it’s encouraged and it’s part of the culture. You have Palestinian mothers that dream of their sons one day becoming shahed, becoming martyrs, and and it’s a disgusting way to live life. I wish better for them.”
