In January of 2016, Avner Harari strolled out of a Tel Aviv prison for the umpteenth time and announced he was finally going straight. The convicted assassin, who has a smooth, bald head and mischievous eyes, had spent 40 of his 61 years behind bars and had cultivated a reputation as the Israeli mafia’s “Terminator”. Now, Harari hoped that people might forget the six mobsters that police allege he whacked, as he unveiled an unlikely career change. “I was a criminal in the past,” he admitted in a television interview. “But thank God, I’m a musician now.”
Harari had spent his most recent prison term crooning songs in the Mizrahi style, a Middle-Eastern music that Israelis have adopted with the same fervour as falafel. His lilting voice was so angelic that inmates nicknamed him the Nightingale. Free from his cage after serving 37 months for firing an anti-tank missile at a rival crime boss and six years for conspiring to shoot another with a silencer, he released two tender ballads. In “A New Page” he sang: “I’m a man who pursues honesty and justice.” He hoped to perform a new album at the historic Caesarea theatre, where King Herod hosted gladiator fights 2,000 years ago, or at the modern Yad Eliyahu Arena where, more recently, Alicia Keys has performed. “I am fulfilling my dream,” he told the media.
But Harari’s record bombed. And 17 days after his release, a series of terrible explosions rocked Tel Aviv. 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. Tel Aviv police launched an investigation to discover if the Terminator was back and, if so, how far would he go in pursuit of fame.