Stadium staff and police escorted demonstrators out of Enterprise Center in St. Louis on Thursday night after protesters hoisted anti-Israel banners.
The signs could be seen from both rinkside seats and a private box as the Blues hosted the Vegas Golden Knights. One banner draped near the ice showed a crossed-out Star of David surrounded by red splashes resembling blood, along with the words “Israel Kills.”
In a private suite, signs depicted the Statue of Liberty alongside slogans demanding to “Free America from Israel.”
Arena security and local police quickly stepped in, confiscated the banners and removed the protesters from the building.
Tom Stillman, chairman and governor of the hockey franchise, issued a sharp rebuke of the demonstration.
“The St. Louis Blues organization, and I personally, condemn antisemitic rhetoric in all forms,” Stillman told St. Louis Jewish Light. “The vile messages of hate briefly displayed at our game last Thursday were unfortunate and unforgivable, and not remotely representative of our fans or our hometown.
“Our arena staff and local law enforcement responded immediately to confiscate the prohibited banners and eject the offending individuals,” Stillman added. “Antisemitism has no place in our community, and we will never allow it in our building.”
Civil rights group calls out hateful tropes
Jordan Kadosh, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Heartland, warned that the messaging evoked antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“This is problematic, right? This echoing these longstanding tropes that Jews secretly control the government, right? And these kind of conspiracy theories, if you claim it’s Israel or Zionists that secretly run something, it’s a stand-in for Jews. It doesn’t change the content,” Kadosh told Heartlander News.
The imagery, particularly the defaced Star of David covered in red paint, recalls a centuries-old antisemitic trope known as blood libel.
“Blood libel is an ancient trope as well,” Kadosh said. “This idea that Jews have some sort of affinity for blood dates back to, you know, a myth that Jews use blood to bake their Passover matzas. I can assure you, there’s only three ingredients: it’s flour, water, and salt.”
Kadosh praised the St. Louis Blues for taking swift action against the protesters.
“This is a good example of what people should do,” Kadosh said. “They had a policy in place about demonstrations not related to hockey. Obviously, they enforced it. They removed the demonstrators and then they publicly condemned the incident and antisemitism. There was no equivocation. This incident happened. It was dealt with and it was condemned.”
Kadosh emphasized that sports venues ought to remain unifying spaces for the local community.
“I’m a Blues fan,” he said. “I wasn’t at the game on Thursday night, but I should be able to go to a game and it should be about hockey. That’s where sports bring people together. We’re all rooting for the same team, and in St. Louis in particular, we’re all good sportsmen.”
Social media footage linked the demonstration to Freedom Convoy USA, an activist group traveling cross-country from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress and gain support for ending America’s financial assistance to Israel.
“They’ve been engaging in antisemitic displays in numerous stops nationwide,” Kadosh noted. “They also handed out flyers outside the arena, apparently in St. Louis, when people were leaving. It was a whole planned stunt.”
(Photo credit: ADL Heartland)