مجموعة ١٧ / ١٠ (٤) "شؤون داخلية: الوضع السياسي؛ العلاقات مع الحكومة البريطانية" [ظ‎‎٦‎٢] (١٠٣١/١٢٤)

a special meeting at which they agreed to accept ninety-one out of t le iegent &
105 nominations, but raised objection to the remaining tourteeii. hurther
negotiations conducted by courier during the three-day holiday or “ ie a H ^ti,
which began on the 30th September, resulted in an oiler by the 1 rune Minister t‘>
accept eight more of His Royal Highness s list, not including the n\e shialis to
whom he and his colleagues had taken exception. Salih Jabi and Jalai Habau-^^
refused, however, to agree to this solution and resigned. .Thereafter, a few
further adjustments having been made, a list of candidates acceptable to both
the Regent and the remaining members of the Cabinet w r as drawn up and the
elections took place throughout the country on the 5th and 6 th October. I he
results showed that some sixty-five of the members of the last Chamber had been
returned, and that of the remainder thirty had been in one or more previous
Parliaments and about twenty were new men. All of the vehement and convinced
supporters of Rashid Ali s anti-British policy were eliminated. In its general
character the new r Chamber is very much like most of its predecessors and it may
be relied upon to act in much the same way as other Chambers have acted in the
past.
3. At the official opening of Parliament on the 9th October the Speech from
the Throne w r as short and merely intimated that the chief work of the session
would be to consider the amendments to the Organic Law passed by the last
Parliament and to prepare a new electoral law r which would harmonise with the
spirit of these amendments. Muhammad al Sadr and Hamdi al Pachachi were
re-elected respectively President of the Senate and President of the Chamber.
4. Parliament having got to w r ork the Prime Minister was at last able to
snatch a bare fortnight’s rest. He left by air for Palestine on the 11 th October
and returned on the 23rd October in time to supervise the constitutional arrange
ments made necessary by the Regent's impending absence on a visit to the United
Kingdom and to deal wdth the opposition that was threatened in the Senate to the
Law Amending the Constitution. This measure passed through the Chamber
without difficulty, but in the Senate an attempt seems to have been made to make
it the occasion for criticism of the elections. This trouble was, however, soon
disposed of by the Prime Minister, and the Senate passed the law at their third
meeting.
5. Early in September the Bagdad radio and press suddenly opened an
attacked on Zionism. Much of the matter used was historical and comment was
on the wLole reasonable, but there were also articles which employed highly
emotive language and contained unmistakable threats of retaliatory violence
against Jews in other Arab countries if the Zionists persisted in their endeavours
to make Palestine a Jewish State. Such an outburst could only have occurred
under official direction, and in my absence Mr. Thompson immediately made
strong representations to the Prime Minister emphasising its several objectionable
features.
6 . iNuri Pasha took the line that the propaganda of the Zionist extremists
had remained unanswered long enough; in America a strong anti-Arab campaign
was in progress and he had therefore lifted the ban which in Iraq had for a long
time been placed on all publicity about the Jewish problem in Palestine. He
undertook, however, to insist on moderation and to consider calling off the cam
paign after a few days. Some improvement was noticeable after this interview,
but on the 17th September, the day after my return from leave, two more articles
appeared, one of which stressed in strong language the point that the policy of
the extreme Zionists would react adversely on Jews living in Arab countries other
than Palestine. I accordingly raised the subject myself in the course of a long
conversation that I had that day with the Prime Minister and told him frankly
that provocative tactics of this kind would in the long run do much harm to the
Arabs themselves. Thereafter the articles ceased.
7. This anti-Zionist outburst much alarmed the large local Jewish popula
tion and many were apparently persuaded to believe that it had been encouraged
by British influence. Among the Jews, and to a lesser extent among the Arabs,
the idea was canvassed that the British were pro-Arab and the Americans pro-
Jew, and care was taken by interested persons to see that suspicions that we were
the real instigators of anti-Zionist feeling among the Arabs were brought to
American notice. The American Legation were informed of the facts, but the
arrival of Colonel Newcombe on the 13th September for a week’s intense contact-
hip of A]ab .Nationalists was pomtGrl to fw many as a further evidence of British