As the International Ice Hockey Federation bans Israel from its World Championships, the NHL is backing away from its October 9 statement, “We stand with Israel.” Fans are left wondering if the league will now amend its “Hockey Is for Everyone” slogan with a caveat: “Except for Jews.”

That’s how I perceive the NHL’s statement Saturday. It fell far short of demanding that the International Ice Hockey Federation rescind its ban, however temporary. Instead, the NHL waffled on the decision of the IIHF to tell the Israeli men’s team, as I put it in a column Saturday, “to stay home” from the competition, set to begin January 22. It cited “health and safety concerns.”

What an absurdity. Hockey is the roughest team sport. Its players are renowned for a willingness to brawl; missing teeth are badges of honor. They fought back with their supporters and the Federation softened its ban, saying it may allow other Israeli teams to compete later this year.

Thanks for nothing. The Federation’s “zero-tolerance approach to integrity violations,” I wrote, “echoes the NHL’s diversity slogan, “Hockey is for Everyone;” so, I sought the NHL’s comment. My hope was that the world’s top professional hockey league still condemned Hamas and antisemitism.

Instead, the NHL fanned on the puck. In a statement on Saturday, it expressed “significant concerns” about the ban but said it has been assured that it’s “intended to be temporary” and “rests solely on the IIHF’s overriding concern for the safety and security” of all teams.

The NHL also said it had been “assured that the decision is not intended to be a sanction.” Whatever the intentions, Israel athletes are being denied the opportunity to compete for a world championship because terrorists might put hate into action. Why not stand with the Israelis and cancel the whole blooming championship?

“We urge the IIHF to take whatever steps necessary,” the NHL statement concluded, “to address its concerns as expeditiously as possible.” This neutrality stands in contrast to the NHL’s past acts of courage, such as welcoming its first Red Army player, and opening the Iron Curtain for others.

In 1983, Viacheslav “Slava” Fetisov demanded the Soviet Union grant his right to play in the NHL. The KGB handcuffed him to a car battery and beat him to change his mind. The USSR’s minister of defense, Dmitri Yazov, screamed in Mr. Fetisov’s face that he’d exile the player to Siberia — and his family, too.

Years of defiance culminated in 1989 when Mr. Fetisov hit the ice with the New Jersey Devils, weathering Cold War rage and threats. The NHL safeguarded his liberty, helping weaken the communist state. Two years later, Mr. Yazov led a coup against President Gorbachev that failed to turn back the clock.

William “Willie” O’Ree broke the NHL’s color barrier in 1958. The Canadian’s triumph for equality would have been impossible had the league buckled to concerns that racists would threaten “safety” at games.

Now 88, Mr. O’Ree is an ambassador for the NHL’s Diversity Program, but when he first put on a Boston Bruins sweater, hate snowed from the rafters. In 1986, he told the University of Toronto that Eric Nesterenko of the Chicago Blackhawks “loved”  using against him an infamous slur for Black people.

At one game, Nesterenko knocked out Mr. O’Ree’s front teeth and broke his nose. Mr. O’Ree retaliated by whacking his stick over Nesterenko’s head, almost igniting a riot. Blackhawks players threatened to kill him. Fans hurled “every racist name in the book,” Mr. O’Ree said, and he was “lucky to get out of the arena alive.”

“I fought because I had to,” Mr. O’Ree told a former center, Terry Crisp, in 2020, “not because I wanted to.” Players, like proud nations, don’t shrink when challenged. They also drop the gloves for defenseless teammates who get hit when their heads are down, extracting the justice of the fist.

On October 7, Israelis were marking the holy day of Simchat Torah. Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire brokered by the Biden Administration on May 13, and Israel had ended its occupation of Gaza 20 years earlier. Neither ensured their “health and safety.”

“The time is always right,” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “to do the right thing.” The NHL did the right thing in 1958 and 1989. The time has come to do it again. They can press the Federation to admit the Israel National Team to their world championship or admit that “Hockey is for Everybody” is just a toothless slogan.