Israeli Rapper SHI 360's New Jonathan Pollard Protest Song
SHI 360 joins the list of musicians who have released songs in support of imprisoned Jewish-American Jonathan Pollard.
Ben Bresky - Arutz7/INN - August 17, 2012
SHI 360 joins the list of musicians who have released songs in support of imprisoned Jewish-American Jonathan Pollard. Shai Haddad, better known by his musical moniker, spoke to Arutz Sheva's Israel Beat Jewish Music Podcast about the new track.
"It's something that's been 'sitting on my head', as we say in Hebrew, for a long time. I have been reading how much of this case was so unjustly handled and I want to inform people of the facts," he stated.
The hip-hop style song is interspersed with sound bytes from TV news and other sources about the case.
"He's serving life in prison for a crime for which the average sentence is four or five years," SHI 360 stated. "I'm not trying to claim he's innocent, but he should be release. He's done his time."
Pollard was convicted of passing classified information to Israel in the mid 1980s dealing with Arab chemical and biological weapons capabilities and sentenced to life in prison, originally in solitary confinement.
SHI 360's other new project is a full length album with a Turkish rapper named Sirat. "People get the misconception that all Jews hate all Muslim and all Muslim hate all Jews," SHI 360 related. "I'm not trying to please anyone through my music. I have seen instances where Jewish artists collaborate with Muslim artists and they always find a need to be apologetic about Israel. If you don't respect yourself, who will respect you?"
He lamented people who "promote division through boycotts and sanctions, and then present that they are cool with the other side." SHI 360 called such an approach a facade. "No one respects that," he stated. He said that he has received emails from Turkish fans who praise him not in spite of his adherence to his identify but because of it.
The album is in Turkish, English and Hebrew and discusses day-to-day life struggles.
He previously recorded a hip-hop version of "Unknown Soldiers," Avraham Stern's anthem of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lechi).