In an apparent attempt to shield the ex-Mufti Jerusalem, the stenographic record of the Anglo-American inquiry committee’s hearings has omitted a remark by Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, Arab Higher Committee spokesman, to be effect that the Mufti cooperated with the Nazis because he thought they might win. The omission was noted today, when the official record of last Tuesday’s hearings was public.
Towards the end of Tuesday’s hearings, Richard Crossman, one of the British members, confronted Abdul Hadi with a photograph of the Mufti in the act of “helling” Salem S.S. troops, and asked him for some explanation or comment. Abdul Hadi said: The Mufti was only trying to make a deal in case Germany won the war.”
Although this remark and a further exchange between Abdul Hadi and Crossman was pleased by the censor and published in the local press, the record omits the episode with the explanation: “At this point the witness dispensed with the services of the interpreter and, unfortunately, the (court) reporter could not make a continuous accord.”
COMMITTEE SPLITS INTO FOUR UNITS; SOUTH AFRICAN JEWS TESTIFY
The committee today split up into four sub-committees, two of which will tour Palestine, one is en route to the Levant, and the last group will visit Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Appearing before the sub-committee consisting of British co-chairman Sir John Singleton, Major Manningham-Buller and Frank Buxton, which leaves tomorrow for Iraq, delegation of South African Jews revealed that Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, Prime minister of the Union of South Africa, has submitted a memorandum on the Palestine Jews to the inquiry committee.
Shimon Kuper, Johannesburg chairman of the Board of Deputies of South Africans, stressed that there is no place of haven in the world for Jews, not even South Africa where there is no room for Jewish refugees, and which is unwilling to accept them. Speaking for the 100,000 Jews of the Union, Kuper called for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine, abrogation of the White Paper, and unrestricted Jewish immigration.
Bernard Gering, testifying in behalf of the behalf of the South African Zionist Federation, separated the contributions of South African Jewry toward the building of a Jewish national home in Palestine. He asserted that South African Jews, together with world Jewry, feel that the only solution to the Jewish problem is unrestricted immigration Palestine as a “right” not on sufferance, and the establishment of a Jewish state. Sir Michael Conway, another member of the South African delegation, declared that South African Jews support Zionist.
The sub-committee, composed of American co-chairman Judge Joseph Hutcheson, Tas MacDonald, and Lord Morrison, journeying to the Levant, will visit the coastal areas of Palestine, including the city of Haifa. Before taking off for Haifa, Lord Morrison visited the Holon settlement, south of Tel Aviv, to inspect a Jewish Agency housing project there.
On his tour Morrison met a Jewish woman partisan from Poland, whom he asked if she wanted to return to her native land. She replied “No,” despite the fact that her husband and children were still in Poland. With tears in her eyes, she begged that certificates be granted to her family. Morrison consoled her, saying “from now on everything will be all right.”
The two units of the inquiry committee remaining in Palestine consist of Sir Frederick Leggett, Wilfred Crick, and Bartley Crum, and Richard Crossman, William Phillipe, and Frank Aydelotte. The former group will start out early next week on a our of factories and settlements to study the economic problems facing the country. The latter group will study social and health problems. It will also visit the Latrun Detention camp for political prisoners, where it will inspect prison conditions and speak with the detainees.
It has been learned that at the inquiry committee’s first secret session yesterday the probers heard Major General John C. Darcy, British commander-in-chief in Palestine, and Major General E.L. Bols, commanding the Sixth Airborne Army, whose troops are garrisoning Palestine. At its second closed hearing, this afternoon, it heard Emanuel Neumann, John B. Hays, and John Savage, representing the Commission on Palestine Surveys, an American group supporting the development of the Jordan Valley for irrigation and electric power.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
