"The goal is to get people thinking," he said. "We were talking about the situation and feeling helpless when we got the idea of a candlelight vigil. Instead of having some kind of rally and expressing anger, we wanted to get people together and have a quiet moment to think about peace."

As Israel's military incursion into Gaza, which began Dec. 26 in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli targets, entered its third week, Lapp and his friend Catriona Lowe became increasingly saddened and outraged by the situation.

"It made me cry," said Lowe. "It just seemed like a really horrible time with the promise of the new year."

"I think it's horrific the way this attack has been carried out, with aerial bombings on populated areas," said Lapp. "Israel is justified in responding to rocket attacks but there are peaceful solutions that are not being explored. I think that when you start killing innocent women and children, all you're doing is creating more terrorists."

The pair used word of mouth and the Internet, in the form of an e-mail list and the social networking site Facebook, to spread the word about their plans for a candlelight vigil.

"The media presents a one-sided picture of the crisis, Obama remains silent or expresses tacit support for the Israeli military campaign through his staff, so silence on our part is not an option," said their Facebook posting. "Please join us in this plea for peace."

Lapp and Lowe invited 96 people to attend the vigil via Facebook and dozens more through a Yahoo! group called "Justpeacehomer."

As participants began to gather shortly before 7 p.m., Lapp handed candles out to those who hadn't brought their own. The group moved to the sidewalk along Pioneer Avenue and stood, silently for the most part, for about an hour. As vehicles passed by on the busy street, a few honked their horns in approval.

Bjorn Olson rode his bicycle to the vigil and said he had come to support the idea of world peace.

"What's going on is not peaceable," he said. "This endless tactic of rocks versus missiles is not going to resolve anything. It just doesn't work."

Art Koeninger, a self-described Quaker who was suffering from a cold, was inspired to attend the vigil by fresh news reports about civilian casualties in Gaza.

"There's not necessarily a good guy and a bad guy in this situation," he said. "There's a bad guy and a worse guy. What Israel is doing here is taking a hundred eyes for an eye. The way I look at it, there is God in everybody; therefore, we don't go around killing God."

Aaron Selbig can be reached at aaron.selbig@homernews.com.