My wife (at the time) made an observation once, after we had begun our practice. She noticed that growing up where we did, in the middle of blue-collar America, she had never seen a real, orange-robe wearing, shaved-head Buddhist monk. Until we started practicing. Then we saw them all the time. We ran into them in bookstores. We saw them driving around. We saw them walking down the street. Synchronicity.

I recently flew to cover a tech conference, and at the airport, in the boarding area, I saw a monk. It’s been a while. I haven’t gone to the temple in about a year, and seeing a monk drove that point home. I commented to my travel partner: “Look, a monk!” When we got on the plane, I looked down the row and found my seat. Guess who was sitting in the seat next to it? Yep, the monk.

A few minutes later, another man came down and pointed at the monk’s seat and said “that’s my seat” while looking at his ticket. The monk didn’t understand, and simply handed me his ticket. I looked at it, and noticed that he was supposed to be sitting elsewhere. I said to the man, “I’m sorry, he must have picked this seat at random”. The attendant immediately overheard and defused the situation by asking the man to exchange seats with the monk, would it be a problem, etc. He didn’t have a problem with it, and sat in the monk’s assigned seat. I handed the ticket back to the monk, noticed the Thai script on his bag, and put two and two together. I realized he was from my temple, and I gave him a traditional Thai greeting and referred to him as “achahn”. He broke into a huge grin and asked me if I spoke Lao. Unfortunately, I don’t.

We didn’t talk much due to the language barrier. I found out he was flying from Detroit to San Jose, CA. He had me order coffee for him and was glad I knew how Lao monks generally like their coffee. He handed me his ticket and asked me to help him get to his connecting flight when we got to Denver. When we landed in Denver, I helped him find a person who could escort him to his flight. I gave a wai, bowed, and thanked him. He handed me a miniature buddha statue charm and said “Thank you for help”. All in all, an experience to remind me that I need to get back to the temple, an exercise in synchronicity, and an auspicious beginning to what turned out to be a very successful business trip.

As the Israeli invasion of Gaza is expected to intensify, putting more innocent civilians into harms way, I am surprised that there is little to no reaction from the United States besides the Bush administration’s support and a congressional resolution offering “unwavering” support for Israel and its right to defend itself (US Senate supports Israel’s Gaza incursion). The United States, which has arguably been Israel’s closet ally since 1948, is in a unique position to push Israel to stop this violence, or at the very least, to show restraint. Instead, we, as a country, have done the opposite.

I realize that Hamas is little more than a terrorist organization that fires home-made rockets indiscriminately into Israel, but that does not justify Israel’s disproportionate response. While it is difficult to verify the information coming out of Gaza as Israel has prohibited foreign journalists from entering during these past two weeks, it is estimated that at least 400-700 people have been killed compared to 28 people killed by Hamas rocket attacks since 2001 (BBC News Q&A: Gaza conflict). Many of these are said to be innocent civilians, including women and children.

The civilians themselves are trapped between a rock and a hard place. The Gaza strip, which is smaller than Portland, Oregon, yet has twice the population, is basically a prison state with Israel controlling their airspace and territorial water, as well as the Gaza-Israel border. The only other access point is the Gaza-Egypt border, which itself is protected by concrete and steel walls. The Palestinians have nowhere to run. So, when Israel says that it has informed the residence of Gaza that they plan to escalate its military action against Hamas, where can they go to escape the violence? Israel says that Hamas deliberately stores their weapons in heavily populated areas so as to assure civilian casualties, but does that justify the bombing of homes, schools, shelters and other civilian locations?

One of the latest stories is that a UN aid truck carrying relief supplies was attacked by an Israeli tank, and as a result, the UN is ceasing aid until their safety is assured. This is bad news for almost half the population of Gaza, which the UN says is dependent on them for food since an 18 month Israeli blockade began. What is worse is that, according to the BBC, “much of the population is without electricity, about half are without running water, and food deliveries to 750,000 have been seriously disrupted” (Gaza humanitarian crisis deepens). It is a nothing short of a humanitarian crisis, and I am dismayed by the lack of sympathy coming out of Washington for the Palestinian people.

I understand that Israel has a right to defend itself, and I think that Israel should do what it can to stop the rocket attacks and protect its citizens, but not only is the suffering and misery experienced by the entire civilian population of Gaza appalling, it is, in the words of John Ging, Gaza’s director of operations for the refugee agency UNRWA, “… creating fertile ground for the extremists” (UN official says Israel’s siege of Gaza breeds extremism and human suffering).

Even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that, “Our resolution reflects the will of the state of Israel and the will of the American people” (Few speak up for Palestinians in U.S. Congress), I want to make it clear that I neither condone or support Hamas’ rocket attacks into Israel nor do I condone or support Israel’s siege of Gaza. This insanity has to stop. As with others around the world, I hope that a short-term cease-fire can be worked out, and that, ultimately, a true lasting peace can be reached with the help of the international community.