Dr. Weizmann Testifies Today Before Anglo-american Inquiry Committee in Jerusalem

Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency, is scheduled to appear tomorrow before the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee which will open its hearings with brief statements by Government officials. Dr. Weizmann will testify on the historical relationships of the Jewish people to the Jewish land, and on the moral and humane basis of the Jewish demand for Palestine.

Testimony concerning the demand for the immediate establishment of Palestine is a Jewish state will be given on Monday by David Ben Gurion, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency. Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Agency, will testify Monday on the twenty-five years of British rule in Palestine.

Members of the inquiry committee today visited the Old City section of Jerusalem and were blessed by Chief Rabbi Usiel at the Churvah Synagogue, the oldest in Palestine.

SUB-COMMITTEES HOLD HEARINGS IN NEIGHBORING ARAB COUNTIES

Two sub-committees of the Anglo-American inquiry committee, each composed of three members, are now visiting Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and Syria and Lebanon, Harold Bealy and Leslie Rood, British and American secretaries of the committee, today revealed at a press conference here. More than 50 journalists representing the press of all stations of the world were present at the conference.

Bealy and Rood also reported that two days of the hearings in Palestine would be devoted to representatives of the Jewish Agency and two would be assigned to Arab Higher Committee spokesman. The secretaries also disclosed that the members of the joint committee will spend five days in hearings here, then tour the country for a week, after which they will spend five more days taking testimony before proceeding to Switzerland where they will write their report.

Newsmen asked Bealy and Rood whether the sub-committees now touring the Arab states would take measures to protect Iraqi Jews giving pro-Zionist testimony, in view of the fact that Zionism is illegal in Iraq. Rood replied: “The committee is taking all precautions possible, but obviously the safest procedure is to submit written evidence. The committee can also be depended upon to know if anyone is testifying under pressure.”

COMMITTEE DOESN’T WANT NEWMAN ON ITS OF PALESTINE

The secretaries also stated that no arrangements had been made for press representatives to accompany the committee on its tour of Palestine, because the members fell that they might learn more if their arrival at villages, collective farms and Arab settlements is not announced beforehand. They added:

“The committee is going to have great difficulty getting the feel of the country in such a short time. They do not want to feel they are walking into places as a platoon or as people talking to a large audience. There will be both conducted tours and random sampling of the population. Certainly there is nothing secret in the committee’s course,” they concluded.

Asked why no interim report had been issued at Vienna, Rood declared that it was thought that the interrelation of the two problems–the problem of the European views, and an examination of the political, social, and economic problems of Palestine–was too great to permit the issuance of an interim report at that time. Rood also pointed out physical difficulties were involved, since the committee was both taking testimony and collating reports, with some reports still unwritten and some European testimony still untaken at the time, Bealy intimated that the issuance of an interim report was still not ruled out.