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Weather: Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms. A slight chance of showers in the morning, then a chance of showers in the afternoon. Highs around 80. South winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Sunday Night: Showers likely with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the evening. Much cooler. Less humid with lows in the mid 40s. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph, becoming northwest after midnight. Chance of rain 70 percent. Check tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Christmas Services: At Palm Coast United Methodist Church, 5200 Belle Terre Parkway, Palm Coast, a Message of Peace at 8 and 9:30 a.m., and the Little Lights Kids Christmas Recital at 9:30 a.m.
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email PalmCoastFarmersMarket386@gmail.com
City Repertory Theatre’s Holiday Cabaret, 3 p.m., at City Repertory Theatre at City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway #B207 Palm Coast. Spice up your holidays with our festive cabaret featuring talented performances that will enchant you through a medley of beloved ‘Carols’ and a delightful mix of naughty and nice skits. From hilarious comedy to heartwarming moments, this cabaret promises to be an unforgettable holiday experience. All proceeds will go toward the reconstruction of the Flagler Playhouse. Tickets are $25 for adults, $15 for students. Some materials may not be appropriate for younger children. Book here.
The Sound of Christmas: 3 p.m., St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 5400 Belle Terre Parkway Palm Coast, Choral Arts Society presents their 25th annual holiday concert “The Sound of Christmas” Free Admission, but tax-free donations are appreciated to assist with the awarding of scholarships to local college bound students pursuing music.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 55 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 1 to 4 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
In Coming Days:
Dec. 23: Culmination of toy drive for Toys for Tots at AW Custom Kitchens, European Village, starting at 11 a.m. A drawing for all eligible participants will take place at 2 p.m. Anyone who will have donated toys for the drive will have a chance to win various items, including a 65-inch 4K Smart TV, an Apple iPad, a pair of Apple Air Pods, and gift cards from the co-sponsors of the event. Fifty such cards have been donated. With proof of a voucher, donors also will receive a free hot dog, a free drink, a free popcorn, a free cotton candy, and a free snow cone. There will be a variety of fun things to do such as a bouncy house for children in thanks to the community for its generosity. See details here.
Notably: If a Palestinian gets obliterated but there’s no Israeli to approve reporting the murder, has the Palestinian really died? In the American and some of the European press, no. But Palestinians continue to get obliterated–massacred, murdered, cleansed by a pogrom in reverse–even if the press isn’t reporting it. We’re up to 18,000 dead right about now–“At least 17,487 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures,” Reuters reported three days ago, “while 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas incursion into Israel, according to Israeli tallies.” Since that works out to 291 Palestinian lives per day, and it’s been three days since that report, we can comfortably–oh, so comfortably–add another 874 lives lost (well, terrorist lives lost, to be Israeli about it, most of them women and children terrorists), which brings the tally to 18,361. Congratulations to the IDF! It has outdone itself, outdone its massacre in Lebanon in the 1982 war, which tallied 17,825 killed, plus 30,203 wounded, maimed, etc. The killing of Palestinian troops was higher in that war, over a third of the dead (send the IDF an appreciation cookie for not massacring as many civilians). What did that 1982 war achieve? Why, it rid South Lebanon of the PLO< did it not? Those “terrorists” were shipped off to North Africa, what remained of them, so they could make room for the burgeoning of the seeds the Israeli invasion planted: Hezbollah. They don’t call it the Fertile Crescent for nothing. Hezbollah is an indigenous Lebanese Shiite organization–more rabid than the slightly more ecumenical PLO, whose militants included Christians, Shiites, Sunnis, Druze and Armenians. Hezbollah is more into Republican-like purity: if you don’t fit its creed, you’d better stay in decadent Maronite Lebanon (by which they mean the neighborhoods I grew up in) or the Sunni north, like Tripoli (a town that well resisted even some of the crusaders’ version of IDF brigandage). Hamas may well be wiped out of Gaza. At least those militants who identify as Hamas. But you terrifically efficient as the IDF’s killing machine may be, you cannot wipe out 2 million Gaza Palestinians, let alone 3 million Palestinians under Israel’s iron heel in the West Bank. Israel is seeding again, as it always has so well, a new, more vicious version of Hamas, whose name we may not readily know, whose reason for being we have always known: As long as Israel continues to deny Palestinians’ right to exist–in word, in deed, in bloody fact–there will be no wiping out the impulse of a people to be freed of one of the most barbarically repressive apartheid regimes on the planet. Watch the video below. Substitute “Gaza” for “Lebanon” every time the narrator speaks. Nothing has changed. Fortunately for Lebanon, only a third of it is under Hezbollah’s barbaric heel, and smaller fractions under Israel’s, so Lebanon can better concentrate on enjoying its own regime’s corruption and failed-state status, because in the end proud Lebanese will not allow their destruction to be outdone by anyone but their own hand.
—P.T.
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It seems ridiculous that in the seventh week of war we’re still immersed in the nostalgia of the first three days. Against all logic we Israelis believed- many because they wanted to believe that the war could be over in three days. All too soon we found that we had been lied to, and that we had lied to ourselves. This conviction has now become a collective mood, which transcends analysis and knowledge. This long war, much too long, affects every aspect of our lives as a people. It becomes a spiritual encumbrance even when we don’t want to think about it. It is growing in our flesh. Without being able to explain why with any clarity, I fear that it can transform the entire way of being and thinking of a people. […]Although every moment of the day we recite the long list of mistakes made by the Palestinians and then go on to the long list of crimes committed by the PLO, not even the Israeli’s obsession with his own security can ever justify the indiscriminate destruction of Palestinian camps. Evidence of the army’s ferocity is now penetrating through the armor of Israeli fear. Moreover, there is the depressing knowledge that the war will be with us for a long time, and in different shapes; and the conviction that, even though he still tries to fool himself, there is no military solution to the Palestinian problem; and the need to assimilate into his psyche the knowledge of the destruction and tragedy we have wrought in Lebanon; and besides all this, the soldiers returning from the front this seventh week–a week of replacement of troops-speak to us of the existence of the other, the Pales-tinian. And whether we like it or not, we must accept what the soldiers tell us. The right of an Israeli soldier to bear witness is hard to deny. In their testimony these men display unexpected feelings. Their amazement is understandable, but at times it even suggests a kind of envy, a curious envy.
–From Jacobo Timerman’s The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon (1982).
Larry says
Isn’t this the real problem?
In Israel/Palestine the parties of God have vetoed any promise of peace. Because of the divine promises made about this territory, there will never be peace, there will never be compromise and people will kill each others children for ancient books and caves and relics.