WTH Is No One in the Music Industry Standing Up for Israeli Hostages? Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Ondrasik is standing up for Israeli hostages in the best way he knows how. Having written and performed songs with strong social messages over the last several decades, he is responding to the horrors of Hamas’ October 7th attacks by rewriting the words to his hit song “Superman (It’s Not Easy)”. Ondrasik’s revised lyrics turn pain into resilience, but why aren’t other artists speaking out? Ondrasik has sung about 9/11, about Afghanistan, about Ukraine, and about terror attacks in Israel. But he is almost alone in the music industry. Why are artists so afraid to do the right thing, and stand against terrorism?
John Ondrasik is a Grammy-Award nominated singer-songwriter who has spent the last several decades writing deeply personal songs with strong social messages in six studio albums featured in over 350 films, TV shows, and advertisements under his hockey moniker, Five for Fighting. Most recently, John has been using his platform to advocate for Israel and denounce the holding of Israeli hostages and the Oct. 7th attacks by the terrorist group Hamas. He has recently updated the words of his song Superman to highlight Israeli hostage Alon Ohel, and the other hostages still held by Hamas.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.1 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. |
| 0:07.1 | Thanks for listening. Here's our show. |
| 0:08.7 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:10.5 | What's really going on? |
| 0:12.0 | We said, what the hell happened? |
| 0:13.5 | You don't have to know what the hell is on it. |
| 0:15.6 | They see what's going on. |
| 0:16.7 | I don't know what's going on. |
| 0:18.0 | What is going on? |
| 0:20.0 | We must find out what's going on. What is going on? We must find out what is going on. |
| 0:29.2 | Hi, I'm Daniel Pletka. |
| 0:30.9 | I'm Mark Tiesen. |
| 0:31.8 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:33.2 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:35.0 | Mark, what the hell's going on? |
| 0:36.8 | Hollywood version. |
| 0:38.4 | Well, music industry version. We're talking to our friend John Andrasic, a five for fighting, |
| 0:42.7 | who is just, he has become the tribune of a generation in speaking out about so many of these |
| 0:48.8 | important issues. He wrote a beautiful song, very sad song after the Afghan withdrawal, |
| 0:53.2 | about our abandonment of our Afghan |
| 0:54.8 | allies called Blood on My Hands. And then he wrote when Russia invaded Ukraine, he wrote a beautiful |
... |
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