The plight of the Jewish people as history’s most persecuted minority has persisted for millennia. Even today, Jews are denied recognition and protection as a minority group — and amid resurging antisemitism, it’s reverberating on Colorado’s college campuses.

For almost two decades, Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm has guided the Rhor Chabad Center, nurturing the spiritual and academic growth of Jewish students at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“There is nothing to compare this to, including during past wars in Israel,” lamented Wilhelm. “I have never seen such anger and fear from parents, students and alumni about what’s happening.”

Immediately following the barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, “Students for Justice in Palestine” emerged on campus — promoting an Oct. 12 “Day of Resistance” protest with a flyer depicting a paraglider, which was the way Hamas swooped jihadists in for their deadly sneak attack. Protesters chanted “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” — a phrase historically used to call for the complete eradication of Israel.

Let’s be clear: This was an explicit endorsement of Hamas’ brutality to achieve “liberation.” Yet CU’s student-led Cultural Events Board reportedly shared it on social media.

“For all the Jewish students here, our lives in the past few weeks have really turned upside down because of our connection to Israel and our Jewish heritage,” said Yehuda HaLevi, a 21-year-old junior.

Wilhelm and HaLevi separately recounted multiple anti-Semitic incidents: A man threatened Jewish students to their faces that he would kill them. (After calling 9-1-1, filing a police report and contacting two additional officers, no one showed up on the scene.)

A student provided a hateful letter, intended for Israeli soldiers and their families, saying “Fk you, genocidal pigs.” Cruel taunts and screams were directed at Jews at a bar in town for simply wearing a yarmulke. During a protest, a man repeatedly yelled “Death to Israel” at a group of Jewish students. The list goes on.

“My wife and I (have) watched students whose bodies are shaking in fear,” Wilhelm told me. “I don’t want to say every Jewish kid, but many kids. This is something we’ve never experienced before.”

Then, on Oct. 23, support came from some faculty members — for Hamas. CU Boulder’s Ethnic Studies Department (ESD) released a statement under university letterhead — read in class and distributed via email to all students and faculty in the department — rejecting the word “terrorism” to describe Hamas’ actions.

Without condemning Hamas, ESD labeled the Palestinian cause a “Feminist issue” — as though blissfully unaware of the subjugated life of women in patriarchal Gaza, or of the rape and kidnapping of dozens if not hundreds of women and girls by Hamas during this war.

They claimed the mantle of “liberation, de-occupation, de-carceration, and decolonization of Palestine” — even though Jews settled Israel nearly 2,000 years before subsequent Arab “colonization,” and Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza since 2005.

For a purported academic department, ESD’s statement was astonishingly bereft of facts, truth and integrity. Without a single word of support for Jewish students and faculty, they defended Hamas and spewed material falsehoods.

After Chancellor Philip DiStefano released a tepid statement distancing the university from their comments, ESD removed the original post — and published a new one that both Wilhelm and HaLevi called even worse.

“We as a department are staunchly against antisemitism and Islamophobia in all forms,” ESD wrote — hyperlinking “antisemitism” to the “Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.” The declaration’s discredited definitions are widely rejected as an attempt to provide cover for left-wing antisemitism.

“The Ethnic Studies department is educating students in their department about when they’re allowed to hate Jews and when they aren’t allowed to hate Jews,” Wilhelm scoffed. “That’s the oldest form of antisemitism.”

Let’s be real: Jews are justified in feeling unsafe at CU Boulder. When any academic department publishes such bigoted drivel, it evokes the aura of institutionalism.

When hostile protests are held on campus — and hate and vitriol are spewed ad nauseam — how are Jewish students supposed to feel?

Departments like ethnic studies claim to be about “diversity, equity and inclusion.” So, why are Jews excluded?

“Antisemitism rears its ugly head and has continued to do so in different ways throughout time,” HaLevi said. “Right now, we’re seeing a modern manifestation of that in our universities and across the world. It’s as simple as that. It’s the denial of the right for the Jewish people to exist and to have a place in this world.”

In statements, many Colorado universities have lumped antisemitism with other categories of bigotry, particularly Islamophobia. Is it really too much to ask to allow Jewish students and faculty some semblance of peace and safety? Imagine the uproar if universities declared “All Lives Matter” during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

“We are a minority in the world. We are a minority in the United States. We are a minority on this campus. And we deserve to be treated with the same level of concern,” HaLevi added.

The University of Colorado and its leadership aren’t the only academic institutions in Colorado to utterly fail their Jewish students and faculty — but their inaction and tolerance of such prejudice makes them complicit.

From regents to administrators, condemnation must come strongly and unequivocally. Colorado’s college campuses must never become safe havens for antisemitism.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and host of “The Jimmy Sengenberger Show” Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on News/Talk 710 KNUS. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.