By Ali Ikram
Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons has slammed bands who won't play in Israel as ‘fools’ and the outburst came on a rare visit to the homeland he left as a child.
He is known for playing bass for Kiss and having one of the longest tongues in show business, now Simmons has taken his reality TV show on the road to Israel – the land of his birth, a country he left more than 50 years ago.
"I haven't been back because when you're climbing a mountain and you never fall and the top of the mountain is just ahead of you and you want to keep climbing it,” he says. “America allowed me to climb the highest level of success."
But he wasn't the only high profile American visitor to Jersualem in recent days; former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin was mobbed by press after visiting the western wall.
“Beautiful and overwhelming to be able to see and touch the cornerstone of our face and overwhelming to know that the Israeli-American link will grow and strengthen as we seek peace," she says.
It is thought the two-day trip is an indication Ms Palin intends to seek the Republican Party's presidential nomination to contest next year's election; she was big on platitudes but didn't give interviews.
Unlike Simmons, who was born Chaim Witz, the rocker slamming acts like The Pixies and Elvis Costello that won't play in Israel, protesting the state’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
"They’re fools,” he says. “The countries they should be boycotting is the country's the populations are rebelling against… people want to be free and they don't want a religious guy telling them where to go and what to do."
Despite leaving the country when he was eight, Simmons says he considers himself an Israeli and an outsider in America.
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