Paris police said Friday they oppose a ban requested by elected officials on Sunday of a concert by Disturbed, whose singer is an outspoken supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a letter to elected officials, the prefecture told them that “the conditions for banning this event were not met; such an attack on freedom of expression can only be declared in light of restrictive conditions,” she said.
The group made a commitment to Zenit “that it will not make any comments that are contrary to the internal regulations of the premises or the law,” she added. “If this had not happened, legal measures would have been taken,” police headquarters warned.
LFI (Radical Left) MP Thomas Portes demanded a ban on the concert, which he said constituted a “direct threat to public order in our country.” He recalled that in June 2024, the band's singer David Draiman walked “on stage at an Israeli military base, signing a bomb ready to be dropped on the Gaza Strip.”
Communist senator Jan Brossa and socialist MP Emmanuel Grégoire, both candidates for mayor of Paris, also called for the concert to be banned.
The same group's Oct. 15 concert in Belgium was canceled on Friday by the mayor of Forest, citing the risk of “serious disruption of public order” due to the singer's “provocations,” according to a ban order seen by AFP.
Disturbed, formed in 1994 in Chicago, became one of the most popular heavy metal bands of the 2000s with their debut album “The Sickness” released in 2000, followed by “Believe” in 2002, both of which were huge commercial successes.
David Draiman, born in 1973 in New York, grew up in a Jewish family, some of whom now live in Israel, and often publicly condemned artists who called for a boycott of the country, such as Pink Floyd guitarist Roger Waters.
