Superman Comes Back to 9/11 After the Hostage Duet

John Ondrasik is set to sing “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” on September 11, 2026, from the base of New York’s Tribute in Light, 25 years after radio pulled the ballad into the wreckage of 9/11. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum booked him with Lainey Wilson and Cyndi Lauper for the first live national broadcast of the twin beams.

The same song already had another job. In February 2026 he sang it with Alon Ohel, the Israeli pianist Hamas seized at the Nova festival and held in Gaza for 737 days.

Twin Beams and a 25-Year-Old Ballad

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum said Ondrasik and Wilson will perform live from the Tribute in Light, with Lauper added days later. David Muir, Robin Roberts, and Diane Sawyer host the ABC special, which also streams on Disney+, Hulu, and National Geographic.

THE SEPTEMBER 11 BROADCAST

• Air time: The program is set for 8 p.m. EDT on September 11, 2026.
• The lights: Twin beams rise as far as four miles and can be seen within 60 miles of Lower Manhattan.
• The first: This is the first year the artwork, lit every September 11 since 2002, is broadcast live nationwide.
• The gap: The museum notes about 100 million Americans were born after the attacks or are too young to remember them.

Ondrasik said he is honored to perform “Superman” for the moment, and that a quarter century has not erased the people who ran into the towers. He did not list Ohel on that bill. The pianist’s chapter with the song already happened, first in a Washington hall and then on a carrier deck.

737 Days, Then a Piano Bench

Ohel was born on February 10, 2001, in Lavon in the Upper Galilee and started piano at nine. He had planned to enter the Rimon School of Music in October 2023 after a trip through Asia. He was 22 when he reached the Nova site near Re’im around 5:30 a.m. on October 7, about an hour before the assault began.

ALON OHEL’S CAPTIVITY

1. October 7, 2023: Takes cover with 26 other people in the roadside “Death Shelter” at the Re’im junction, is wounded by shrapnel in the eye, shoulder, and arm, and is abducted with Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Or Levi, and Elia Cohen.
2. February 2025: His family gets the first proof of life after Levi is freed and describes Ohel chained, starved, and nearly blind from untreated wounds.
3. September 5, 2025: Hamas releases a video, filmed in August, showing Ohel with Guy Gilboa-Dalal.
4. October 13, 2025: Walks out of Gaza after 737 days, one of the 20 last living hostages freed under a United States-brokered deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt.
5. October 24, 2025: Leaves Rabin Medical Center; crowds form along the ride home to Lavon.

He later said he had been chained in one tunnel for most of the two years, then moved about 40 days before the handover, and that gunmen used him as a human shield once fighting pushed into Gaza City. Fellow captive Eli Sharabi, he said, told him it was fine to break down and not fine to lose hope, and the two passed time with cards or backgammon while chained together.

THE YELLOW PIANO CAMPAIGN

• The square: His family put his own piano in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square with his name on it.
• The network: The effort grew to about 30 yellow pianos in public places in Israel and abroad.
• The slogan: “Alon You Are Not Alone” was painted on the instruments, a play on his first name.
• The last piece: On the helicopter out of Gaza he wrote “Song Without a Name,” the Shalom Hanoch song he had played at home the night before Nova.

In November 2025 he had surgery on the shoulder and the injured eye, then sat at that yellow piano in the square and played the song that had followed him underground. Doctors had hoped to bring back part of the vision that captivity left untreated. On February 9, 2026, still 24 for one more day, he filled Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv with Israeli players who worked for free so the door take could fund his recovery.

He Rewrote the Line About Never Going Home

Ondrasik, who records as Five for Fighting, is not Jewish. He went to Israel in April 2024, met hostage families, and played “Superman” in Hostages Square on Ohel’s piano with Ohel’s brother Ronen. He later told interviewers that looking out at those families felt like looking out at firefighters at the Concert for New York City, and that for Israel, October 7 is their 9/11.

Idit Ohel, Alon’s mother, asked him for a musical project while her son was still below ground. He has said the choice locked in when she sent a photograph of Alon at 8, in Superman pajamas. On April 14, 2025, he posted Superman for Alon and the Hostages, cut with footage from the square and from the studio, and with Ronen at the yellow piano.

The original superhero sings about finding a way to lie about a home he will never see. Ondrasik would not keep that line. The new version goes, “Find a way to fly, to a home I will soon see.” He called it a moral issue, not a political one, and said everyone should demand the hostages’ release. Jonathan Greenblatt, who leads the Anti-Defamation League, later wrote that the dedication drew a torrent of hate aimed at a song about a young man taken from a music festival.

We all hope and pray for the day that I can sit down at a piano with Alon and sing “Superman.” We prayed for that miracle. We hoped for that miracle, and my friends, that miracle is right now.

John Ondrasik, speaking before the Washington duet

He closed sets with the video for months, telling rooms that Ohel was the better piano player and that the prayer was to share the bench. The prayer required Ohel to survive the tunnels.

Washington Heard Them Before the Carrier Did

That bench showed up in February 2026 at AIPAC’s Congressional Summit in Washington. Ohel, then 25, took the piano. Ondrasik sang. Idit told the room she had reached the songwriter after seeing her son in those pajamas, and that the clip had been a way to keep Alon’s name in the air while Hamas still held him.

Ondrasik, after the number, said he got through it with a few tears and called it one of the most significant nights of his working life. He posted the video on May 12, 2026, dedicated to people who had fought for the hostages, and added that his heart stayed with families whose relatives did not come home. A longer cut is the full Washington summit performance; our own first account of the Washington Superman piano duet followed that clip.

When we released the new version of "Superman for Alon and the Hostages" we all prayed that one day Alon would sit at a piano with me and together we'd perform Superman.

For all of you who fought for the hostages and their families. This video of that miracle is for you. 🇺🇸🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/STgWBFwuzb

— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) May 12, 2026

By then Ohel had already played in Tel Aviv. Washington was the first time the rewritten American song and the freed pianist occupied the same stage, which is why Ondrasik kept using the word he had promised in the video: miracle.

What the Navy Performance Changed

On July 4, 2026, the pairing moved onto the flight deck of the USS Nimitz in New York Harbor during the International Naval Review for the country’s 250th year. Ohel played. Ondrasik sang “Superman” for sailors, FDNY members, and Gold Star families. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, who arrived at the ship with Ondrasik, Ohel, and Ronen, called it a former hostage playing a song written for first responders on a Navy ship that makes American diplomacy work.

On the historic USS Nimitz, on our 250th bday, I performed Superman for our amazing @USNavy, @FDNY heroes, and Gold Star Families with former hostage Alon Ohel. Alon is a miracle, alive because of the President, @SecRubio & others. America has a history of making miracles. 🇺🇸❤️ pic.twitter.com/pV3puYxLlF

— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) July 5, 2026

Ondrasik wrote that Ohel is alive because of the president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others, and that America has a history of making miracles. He later posted a short by Roy Berkovich of squalls, laughs, and salt in the eyes across 24 hours on the ship. The carrier date did what the Washington hall could not. It parked the hostage arrangement inside a 9/11-adjacent civic rite, with firefighters in the house, months before the song went back to the beams themselves.

Owners of the original hit still hear a private confession about a man in a funny red sheet. The Nimitz crowd heard a public receipt: the person named in the 2025 subtitle was on the bench, and the lyric about a home he would soon see was no longer a wish.

Madison Square Garden Still Echoes in the Chorus

“Superman (It’s Not Easy)” came out two weeks before the 2001 attacks and was written as a complaint about the music business, not as a memorial. After the towers fell, stations cut it against footage of firefighters. It peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2001. Ondrasik was in London on September 11, 2001, his show canceled, hearing from friends that the song was already being used over rescue video.

On October 20, 2001, he played it at the Concert for New York City in Madison Square Garden, a small name on a bill with Paul McCartney, Elton John, and The Who. He has said that looking at emergency workers and families made it hard to finish, and that it remains the most important thing he has done as a singer. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s own billing in 2026 still introduces him through that night.

WHERE SUPERMAN HAS BEEN ASKED TO WORK

Grammy nights and awards galas mostly left the hostage crisis alone, or talked past it. Ondrasik did not, and neither did Disturbed’s Dave Draiman. The song they kept in circulation was already old when the first tower was hit. It is older now, and it has been asked to hold nearly 3,000 dead in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, then a pianist chained in a tunnel, then a carrier full of sailors who were not yet born in 2001.

On September 11, 2026, Ondrasik sings the 2001 arrangement under the beams. Ohel is not on that stage. He already had his chorus, on a ship in the same harbor, after 737 days in which the home in the lyric was not a metaphor.