It's age-old advice for aspiring singers: Because the odds of success are long, it's wise to have a fallback career. Teaching, maybe. Or accounting. Or, in the case of Avner Harari, mafia hitman. The Financial Times tells the incredible tale of Harari, who earned the nickname of "Terminator" in his younger days working for organized crime in Israel. His trademark weapon: a missile launcher. But all the while, Harari harbored ambitions of making it big as a singer in a Middle Eastern style of music known as Mizrahi. (Listen to one of his efforts here.) Back in 2016, Harari stepped out of prison—having spent 40 of his 61 years behind bars at that point—as a self-professed changed man. "I was a criminal in the past," he said in a TV interview. "But thank God, I'm a musician now."
Alas, his CD of songs tanked. And then a strange thing started happening: A "series of terrible explosions rocked Tel Aviv," writes Jeff Maysh, and "they appeared to target those who stood in the way of Harari's musical ambitions, including a Mizrahi music legend who refused to play his songs on her radio show." By 2017, Harari was back in prison, sentenced to 11½ years for attempted murder and bomb plots. Now age 70 and still behind bars, Harari continues to write songs and perform them for fellow inmates whose nickname for him is a far cry from the Terminator—it's the Nightingale. Harari is up for parole soon and still harboring his make-it-big ambitions as a singer. "I have tremendous vocal power," he insists. Whether Israel embraces its singing hitman is another matter. (Read the full story.)
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