The IOOF Cemetery is in need of donations to continue operation of the cemetery, Garry Davis announced this week. Brent Bailey is caretaker. Donations can be sent to P.O. Box 121 with checks made to the Tonkawa Cemetery for upkeep. Davis said money is short because of fewer funer I know this is easy for me to say in my comfortable home far away from the situation. Instead, I will end with an Israeli perspective – the best and fairest one I have ever read. Sandy Tolan’s “The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East,” gives an excellent true story account of the Israel/Palestine situation. Tolan’s principal character, Dalia Eshkenazi, presents what she thinks is the only way forward. Dalia survived the Holocaust as a young child before arriving in Israel and receiving a home of an Arab family that had been forced out. She believes the answer is the three As: Acknowledgement, Apology and Amends. Jews must acknowledge what they did in 1948 and pains they caused, but the Arabs must also acknowledge they are not innocent with the many acts of terrorism they have committed. For amends she said, “It means that we do the best we can under the circumstances towards those we have wronged.” For Dalia, amends could not mean the full right of return, as she said, “the Palestinians have the right of return, but it is not a right that can be fully implemented, because the return of millions of Palestinians would effectively mean the end of Israel.”James Finck, Ph.D. is a professor of history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.
