Marty York: Jewish athletes still facing hateful slurs despite warnings to fans

Crews begin tearing down the Edmonton Oilers tailgate party area outside Rogers Place, in downtown Edmonton Friday May 1, 2026. Photo by David Bloom

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Accompanying the abhorrent increase of antisemitism globally in the past couple of years has been a conspicuous spike in insulting, hateful slurs aimed at Jewish athletes by fans in the stands.

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Those in charge of ensuring enjoyable experiences at professional games are wrestling with ways to combat this lamentable trend.

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“We want to ensure that belligerent fans aren’t taking away from the other fans or players who can’t help but hear these types of negative remarks,” Stuart Ballantyne, president and chief operating officer for Rogers Place in Edmonton, told me in an interview. Rogers Place is where the National Hockey League’s Oilers play their home games.

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“We have come up with ways to deal with this and we have ejected individuals who have engaged in this type of offensive language. In a few cases, we have had to ban these fans for a full season.”

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Antisemitic slurs from hecklers — I’ll be kind and call them hecklers here but they’re actually idiotic haters — in Edmonton started to irk Zach Hyman in September of 2022. Hyman is a star forward for the Oilers and a very proud Jew whose grandparents suffered at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis in the Holocaust. Hyman is a class act, generous to the community with his time and contributions and a role model for many youngsters, Jewish and non-Jewish.

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But he started hearing the anti-Jewish slurs from a small but loud group of fans in the stands, who also weren’t shy when it came to insulting other minority players with the Oilers. Hyman was upset and let Oilers’ management know.

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Ballantyne and his staff began to work on a Code of Conduct message that for the past few seasons has appeared on the Edmonton Jumbotron before and during games. References to offensive and/or abusive language are cited as prohibited and subject to penalties.

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Similar Codes of Conduct messaging appears in most professional sports venues. Problem is, you still hear the bafflegab coming from haters on occasion. It doesn’t seem that the Codes of Conduct are resolving much, at least at certain venues.

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I heard some of the venom myself when I was sitting in the crowd at a game involving the Portland Trail Blazers and Toronto Raptors last December.

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“Zionist pig,” a woman behind me said after Portland forward Deni Avdija fired a pretty pass that led to a Trail Blazers’ bucket. “Baby killer.”

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Avdija is a Jew from Israel, the best basketball player the country has produced. The comments, of course, were ludicrous. Avdija, a National Basketball Association all-star, didn’t hear the woman’s remarks in Toronto, and neither did security, but he was not surprised when told that he was the target of an antisemite’s hate.

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“It happens a lot, everywhere,” Avdija said. “I feel hostility from the crowds sometimes. Also, as I’ve become more recognizable around the league, I find myself having to talk more about Israel and trying to explain to people that, even though I love my country and always will, I play basketball. I am not involved in how the Israeli Government deals with the many problems they face. But my heart is with Israel, of course.”