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Weather: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Sunny, with a high near 80. Light and variable wind becoming east 5 to 10 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 16 mph. Tonight: A 10 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 7pm. Mostly clear, with a low around 72. Southeast wind 5 to 9 mph.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: A plea hearing is scheduled in the case of John Cascone, the former AdventHealth surgeon facing two felony charges of domestic battery, with a prior conviction. He had originally been charged with aggravated child abuse and a felony domestic battery count last November. See: “AdventHealth Surgeon John Cascone Charged with Child Abuse in 2nd Arrest in 4 Years.” The pela hearing is at 1:30 p.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse.
The Flagler County Commission meets at 9 a.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 E. Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Bunnell. Access meeting agendas and materials here. The five county commissioners and their email addresses are listed here. Meetings stream live on the Flagler County YouTube page.
The Beverly Beach Town Commission meets at 6 p.m. at the meeting hall building behind the Town Hall, 2735 North Oceanshore Boulevard (State Road A1A) in Beverly Beach. See meeting announcements here.
Nar-Anon Family Groups offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetings here.
Editorial Notebook: At 5:05 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1995, Benjamin Goldstein, also known as Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn physician who migrated to live in the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, a hothouse of Gush Emunim and other vigilantist anti-Palestinian extremism, entered the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarch, in Hebron, where some 800 Muslim worshippers had gathered for prayer. “I’m in charge here and I have to go in,” he said, shoving the sentry aside. He had often been to the mosque to cause trouble. So he was not a stranger there. First he threw a hand grenade into the crowd. Then, with his Israeli-issued Uzi, he emptied four magazines into the crowd until, at 5:15 a.m., while he was loading his fifth magazine, a worshiper smashed his head with a fire extinguisher, knocking him to the ground. Others stomped and beat him until he was dead. He had killed 29 people and wounded 125 in the single greatest act of an Israeli’s mass murder of Palestinians, at least by a single Israeli (the figure pales compared to state terrorism), since 1967. Rabin and Arafat were solidifying the Oslo Accords at the time, with Bill Clinton pretending to help. “The murderer from Hebron opened fire on innocent people, but intended to kill the making of peace. His aim was political,” Rabin said in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, three days after the massacre. He pledged to stick to the peace accords. He said Goldstein “emerged from a small and limited political sector in the people. He grew up in a swamp that has its sources in foreign lands as well as here; they are alien to Judaism, they are not part of us. To him and his ill we say today: You are not part of the community of Israel. You are not part of the national democratic camp to which all of us here in this house are partner, and very many in the nation loathe you. You are not partner to the Zionist deed. You are a foreign body, you are pernicious weeds. Sane Jewry vomits you from its midst. You have placed yourselves out of the bounds of Jewish law. You are a disgrace to Zionism and a blot on Judaism.” Now, I ask you: what, of the words of Rabin, could not be said today of Benjamin Netanyahu, or Itamar Ben-Gvir, or any of those applauding the genocide in Gaza? Incidentally, until Goldstein’s mass murders, Hamas had abided by a prohibition on harming civilians. As Zaki Shehab writes in Inside Hamas, “Raed Zakarneh became the first Hamas suicide bomber. He drove a bomb (wired up with explosives by [Yahya] Ayyash) to a bus stop at Afula and detonated it, killing eight Israelis and injuring forty-four. Ayyash, who was sad to lose Raed for the cause, promised that this was just the tip of the iceberg for what he had planned.” Ayyash was Hamas’s chief bomb-maker. His bombs took the lives of some 90 Israelis before Shin Bet assassinated him in 1996.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
… Ben-Gvir, who had been convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organizations and, in front of television cameras in 1995, vaguely threatened the life of Rabin, who was murdered weeks later by an Israeli student named Yigal Amir. […] One ultranationalist settler who went regularly to Goldstein’s grave was a teenage radical named Itamar Ben-Gvir, who would sometimes gather other followers there on Purim to celebrate the slain killer. Purim revelers often dress in costume, and on one such occasion, caught on video, Ben-Gvir even wore a Goldstein costume, complete with a fake beard and a stethoscope. By then, Ben-Gvir had already come to the attention of the Jewish Department, and investigators interrogated him several times. The military declined to enlist him into the service expected of most Israeli citizens. After the massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs, a new generation of Kahanists directed their anger squarely at Rabin for his signing of the Oslo agreement and for depriving them, in their view, of their birthright. […] Days after assuming his own new position, Ben-Gvir ordered the police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces in Israel, saying they “incite and encourage terrorism.”
–From “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel,” by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times Magazine, May 16, 2024.
