We tried to tell you.

We have been whistling into the wind for two years that “globalizing the intifada” will mean shootings on the streets of America.

We sounded the alarm that “Free Palestine” is a genocidal slogan that, rather than seeking human rights for Palestinians, in fact denies the humanity of Israelis and Jews.

We have screamed ourselves hoarse explaining that shouting “From the River to the Sea” is not an expression of free speech but rather incitement to violence and murder.

We have begged people to take the threats and words seriously.

And here we are.

Today, I lack the emotional fortitude for witticism. I will keep this short. I can only plead to those who have adopted these slogans and attitudes to take stock of the place we have reached as a society.

Finger pointing and blaming people is rarely productive. Certainly there are those who know precisely what their claimed free speech intended to convey and the violence they sought to incite.

But many - likely a goodly number of pro-Palestine activists on college campuses, for instance - have been hoodwinked into shouting slogans they do not fully understand. Many undoubtedly lacked the ill intent to cause physical harm to others.

If this is you, if you are someone who truly believed you were yelling for a humanitarian cause and not for the destruction of a maligned people, I want to address you directly.

Please make these murders your inflection point.

Toss your keffiyeh in the garbage. Don’t go to the rally at your graduation to shout at your administration to divest from the one Jewish country and thereby discriminate against its people. Don’t wear the “Free Palestine” stole as you march to obtain your diploma. Don’t shout at your Jewish peers who identify as Zionists when they pass by.

Take this moment to slow down and consider what message all of these actions convey and where they can and do lead. Remember that your Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli classmates are just as human as you. They have mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, fiances, friends, dogs, cats, goldfish who love and need them. Their cousin may be serving in Gaza. Their nephew may be crying in a bomb shelter every time the Houthis get antsy and shoot missiles at Tel Aviv. Their aunt may have lived in a kibbutz ravaged on October 7.

They are just as human as those Palestinians who suffer under the conditions imposed by this brutal, frustrating war.

After all these centuries, we are still desperately crying, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

We do. How much more proof does the world need?

Instead of adding fuel to the flame and your voice to now proven incitement to violence, try something different. Pause, reflect, and just see those people around you as human.

We are told to be unfailingly kind to people because we have no idea what anyone is going through at any given time. Apply that tenet to your interactions with the Jews around you, too. When they tell you these slogans make them afraid because they know where it can lead, believe them because you have now seen it with your own eyes.

You do not want to be a party to incitement to murder. Many of us know this. But we still fear your voice added to the fray because every tiny augmentation of the violent message makes the next murder more likely. We don’t want to fight with you. We don’t want our families and friends to be fighting a bloody war. We don’t want to be in this situation.

We just want to live our lives like that beautiful young couple in Washington, D.C. whose future was snuffed out for no reason.

So the next time you are called to join in a protest highlighting these slogans, just don’t.

Please.

Don’t.