The Untold Story: David Draiman’s Explosive Feud with Roger Waters

33 thoughts on “The Untold Story: David Draiman’s Explosive Feud with Roger Waters”

1. This has caused me to dislike Draiman a lot. If he was truly proud of his Israeli heritage he would renounce the country's human rights violations and call for action against them rather than deny them and claim everyone who points them out are nazis. If you love your country you should be advocating to improve its issues rather than brushing them under the rug.

2. David defending Israel is like Toby Keith defending America. A man blind by love for the place he’s from not seeing the corruption their people are causing

3. He’s not a Nazi, you could listen to what he says for maybe five minutes and you’d know he isn’t, but instead you call him antisemitic because of his opposition to the Israeli government, not Israeli people. Besides that, he’s being called antisemitic for a song about a rockstar who treats his audience members like garbage. And I seem to remember a certain singer yelling at a man in a wheelchair to stand up at one of their concerts. So like, you mad the song calls out that kind of behavior you partake in?

4. Just a heads up, Palestinians are semitic people too, so he's not anti-semitic, he's anti-apartheid.

5. The Disturbed singer cries out in pain as he strikes you…

6. When Roger played in my country, he gathered children from orphanage to be his choir in Brick in the wall. He practiced with them, he hanged out with them, he made them feel special. On the other side we have a cover singer….

7. David is just trying to get attention. Most jews arent even semitic they are european.

8. Only a moron would call him "anti-semitic" just to shut him up. Roger Waters is against the Isreali government, not Jews. It's the same thing for being against Russia's government and Putin, doesn't mean you hate Russians.

9. Roger Waters isn't racist. Not liking the State of Israel doesn't mean he doesn't like Jews. There are plenty of people (Including American's), who don't like the American Government but have no problem with the people. I'm not taking sides for Israel or against, but if you can't take criticism of your government, then perhaps you lack free speech. Israel also just got rid of their supreme court because it was "unnecessary opposition" to their agenda. Which, since we're throwing out comparisons to Nazi's and Hitler, is def a move Hitler would've made. We've given Israel a lot of toys to make war with the Muslims too. Hoping everyone can find a better way than war

10. It’s just two hammers.

11. I condemn the isreali government and their genocide of palestian people

12. One of these men riles up violence and preaches darkness with his music, the other has been decrying fascism and war for 50+ years with his…. Fuck Disturbed. Poser band anyways.

13. The ultimate irony is that no one on this earth behaves more like Nazi's than the State of Israel in their apartheid of Palestine

14. Roger is one of the few to call out the massive injustices Israel does daily against the Palestinian People. Here in America we are only told one side of the story, one narrative we are not seeing the children and women getting killed by the brutality caused by israel.
    "Every time we do something, you tell me America will do this and will do that I want to tell you something very clear. Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We the Jewish people control America….and the Americans know it." -Ariel Sharon

15. If Waters is upset about the Israelis building in the west bank and moving on with life without a peace treaty from the arabs, he should see what the Palestinians do to gay people and athiests.

16. Bad take from David Draiman.

17. Waters is an unabashed Jew hater. No question at this stage. His whole pro Palestinian joke is cover for his antisemitism. David Gilmour who played with him for decades says it. His ex wives were made to sign non disclosures. He’s a narcissist filled with arrogance and venom. And besides Gilmour carried waters for decades.

18. Waters been supporting nazis the last year at least, he stands with putler, against Ukraine. So this doesn't surprise me.

19. What makes Roger an anti-semite is that he seems to have no problem performing in my country, the United States. I can see multiple sides to this issue, and not drawing a line in the sand here. But he does follow the money and has no problem with performing in countries that support Israel in a variety of ways. So him purposefully calling people out for performing in Israel is hypocritical. He has other lyrics that are problematic for me. He's a brilliant composer and lyricist. He's also a complete asshole.

20. I'll second another comment here about your ability to objectively report what's going on. It's refreshing. Thanks for keeping us informed!

21. Waters music > Disturbed music and it ain’t close

22. David ❤❤❤

23. Roger Waters is an antisemite? Did not see that coming

24. Roger Waters is a very delusional and unhinged individual, not to mention a friend to this fallen world. Anyone that stands against Israel also stands against God. That never ends well…

25. Way to ruin BDSM

26. One thing is for sure, Roger don't get along with guys named David.

27. You can criticize a government without having a problem with the people. That doesn't make someone a nazi !

28. But what RATM thinks about it?

29. Congratulations on your 730 weeks on the album charts, just amazing. Oh I'm sorry that was Rodger Waters!

30. Drainman is such a hack. There are millions of better musicians and bands to listen to. And 50 years from now when Disturbed's music has faded into obscurity people will still be listening to, covering and discovering Pink Floyd and Roger Water's music.

31. there isnt a right and wrong side in that war. its just pure hate from both ends. something a smart artist wouldnt talk about outside of lyrics. no amount of bickering is gonna fix that shit

32. Polish people also were targeted by Germans, Ukrainians and Russians and Lithuanians and many other nations. I personally had Polish survivors of those atrocities as well. We Poles don't brag about it the whole time, David.

    And now the same media outlets continue spreading unsubstantiated claims that all Poles killed Jews. While I don't deny there were some people like these, here is some true history made by some Quora user, so both sides would get along, sooner or later:

    "(Disclaimer: This answer is bound to be controversial, which is why I see it important to back up my claims with extensive literary evidence, mostly from Jewish sources themselves. It is easy for such an answer to be misunderstood, but my true purpose in writing this is to show the other side of Polish Jewish relations that differs drastically from the commonly accepted narrative that portrays Poland as a traditional hotbed of antisemitism. Indeed, Polish Jewish relations were complex, and no side, including the Jews, was solely innocent. Yet I attempt to show that unfair stereotypes, discrimination, and provocative actions were also carried out by Jews against Poles, and that Polish antisemitism, while real, was not of the same intensity or fervor that existed in other European nations of the era.)

    Traditional Jewish attitudes towards Poles and the Complexity of Polish Jewish Relations

    While many historians and laymen alike choose to focus exclusively on Polish attitudes towards the Jews, they fail to construct an even handed and fair narrative by neglecting the complexity of Jewish attitudes towards the Poles. Recently there seems to be a tendency to view antisemitism as a scourge that is endemic and characteristic to the Polish people and culture, with any criticism voiced by Poles against Israeli policies and proclamations being promptly derided as a symptom of so called “Polish antisemitism”. The problem that lies in this approach, is that it is woefully one sided, and does not seem to consider the great complexities of Polish Jewish relations.

    While the most common trend lately appears to warrant putting the blame for Polish Jewish tensions solely on the Polish side, the truth is that both communities harbored mutual and reciprocal prejudices and stereotypes about the other. There is no doubt that out of all the nations in Europe, it was in Poland that Jews enjoyed not only the most protection and security, but also a home in which they could socially, culturally and politically thrive relatively unmolested. Yet there is no denying that on the eve of the war and the decades before, there existed tensions and discontent between the two groups.

    Historically, Poland has for a great part of its history been a land of relatively peacefully ethnic, religious and cultural mixture and exchange, in contrast to many other areas of Europe. Muslim Tatars, Eastern Christian Armenians, and Protestant Scott’s are only a handful of the many groups that enjoyed protection under the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, with many of them assimilating into the Polish culture. Indeed, Jews were one of the largest of these groups, and played a major role in cultural and social world of Eastern and Central Europe, enjoying freedoms and favors that Western European Jews could only dream of. What separated the Polish Jews from other ethno-religious groups within Poland, including their Jewish kin living in Western Europe, was that they were a willfully secluded and enclosed society that resisted assimilation and even normal interaction with the world of the Gentile Christian Pole.

    While Jewish seclusion is often credited to alleged Polish persecution, there is indeed ample evidence that suggests that segregation between Poles and Jews was applauded and encouraged by the Jews themselves. This purposeful Jewish self-segregation stemmed from a desire to maintain Jewish tradition, a rising Jewish ethno-nationalism, and in part also a condescending attitude towards the cultures of the indigenous Slavic peoples of Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Orthodox Rabbi Avigdor Miller attributed the unwillingness of Poland’s Jews to assimilate to economic self-interest,along with a somewhat condescending attitude towards Poles. The rabbi comments:

    “When the Jews in Spain began to use that wealthy land as a means of mingling with the Arabs and Spaniards, G-d’s plan caused them to be expelled to lands of lesser culture, such as Turkey and Poland, with whom our people had no incentive to assimilate. Among these nations, G-d permitted the Jews to live in relative peace for centuries; for there was no danger that they would imitate the ways of the poor and backward populace. But those of our people who dwelt among the Germans,French, and English were tempted to mingle with them; for their higher living standards created allure. You see how our nation adopted the German language, but not Polish or Turkish.” (1)"

    Harry M. Rabinowicz,in his work, “The Legacy of Polish Jewry: A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-War Years 1919–1939”, highlights the distinctiveness of Jewish society from that of the Poles:

    “Despite a continuous history of nearly ten centuries, the Jews were isolated from their fellow-citizens by religion, by culture, by language, even by dress. The Polish Jew had his own educational system, his own communal organization, his own youth movements, his press, theater,his party politics.”(2)

    Dr. Berthold Zarwyn, himself a Jewish holocaust survivor, wrote this passage in his contribution to Jakob Weiss’s, The Lemberg Mosaic: The Memoirs of Two Who Survived the Destruction of Jewish Galicia:

    “It appears to me that two main factors led to anti-Semitism in Poland. The monopolization of commerce by Jews forced into this area by exclusive regulations, and the lack of cultural interaction based mostly on religious ignorance. The attitudes of Catholic clergy on the one-side and of Orthodox Jewry on the other did not stimulate a normal understanding and intermingling.” (3)

    While Jewish distinctiveness was originally a product of their religion, the emergence of a anti-assimilationist Jewish ethno-nationalism in the late 19th and early part of the 20th century served to only entrench Jewish “otherness” among non Jews and Jews alike. The Yiddishist secular movement in the 19th century further enforced this cultural divide, and defined themselves in direct opposition to the Poles.

    During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when both Poles and Jews were aspiring for future statehood and rights, the differences in culture and conflicting national interests were bound to clash. While Poles wanted to establish Poland as a nation for the Poles after years of foreign occupation, many Jewish groups saw Poland as a multi-ethnic state in which various ethnic groups could vie for their own interests. Some Jewish movements, in particular the Yiddishist-oriented Jews, were against the undoing of the partitions of Poland, as such an event would spell the end of a united Russian Jewry and the advent of “backward peasant nations”. As Joshua Karlip writes in his The Tragedy of a Generation,

    As this last shred of hope gave way to sober reality, Yisroel Efroikin also mourned the breakup of Russia into independent successor states as spelling the death of a unified Russian Jewry. From the late eighteenth century until World War I, Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian Jews had comprised a united Russian Jewry that experienced modernization together through such movements and processes as Haskalah, Zionism, and the rise of Yiddish culture. Now, however, Russian Jews would face the future as minorities in emerging nation-states. … Although the successor states might guarantee personal emancipation and national autonomy, he argued, the small size of these fragmented Jewish communities would preclude autonomy’s implementation. The peasant nationalities that would lead most of these successor states, moreover, would force the Jews from their traditional economic role in commerce and industry. Echoing the Yiddishist call for a synthesis between Jewish and European cultures, Efroikin feared that the low cultural level of these peasant nationalities would negatively affect the development of secular Yiddish culture.(4)

    The desire of the Jews to remain distinct from the non Jewish population also resulted in widespread ignorance of the Polish language, history and culture among many Jews, and schools for Jewish children focused on providing a Jewish education. In an article entitled, “Jews and Poles Lived Together for 800 Years But Were Not Integrated,” published in the New York newspaper Forverts (September 17, 1944), Yiddish author and Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote under the pen-name Icchok Warszawski:

    “Rarely did a Jew think it was necessary to learn Polish; rarely was a Jew interested in Polish history or Polish politics. … Even in the last few years it was still a rare occurrence that a Jew would speak Polish well. Out of three million Jews living in Poland, two-and-a-half million were not able to write a simple letter in Polish and they spoke [Polish] very poorly. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Poland to whom Polish was as unfamiliar as Turkish. The undersigned was connected with Poland for generations, but his father did not know more than two words in Polish. And it never even occurred to him that there was something amiss in that.”(5)"

    As for the rest, google it.

33. David Draiman. Ostensibly a man of limited intelligence and vision. "Fuck Roger Waters". Brilliant, a wonderfully eloquent soundbite which will surely echo through the ages. A role model for all.

    Roger Waters. A man who has used metaphor and lyrical dexterity for over 40 years to stand up for the oppressed, the war-ravaged, and the downtrodden, regardless of ethnicity, religion or politics.
    Obviously a nazi…😖

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