The descendants of two Jewish Iraqi brothers are suing the French government for $22 million in back rent and an additional $11 million in damages, claiming that Paris’s embassy in Baghdad was once their family home.
Philip Khazzam, the grandson of Ezra Lawee, told The Globe and Mail that at the urging of Saddam Hussein’s government, the French government ceased paying rent to the Lawee family and appears to have redirected the money to the Iraqi treasury.
In the 1950s, the Iraqi government nationalized Jewish property and stripped Jews of their citizenship. It led to a mass exodus of the Jewish community, with many immigrating to Israel.
Iraq’s nationalization and confiscation of Jewish property picked up pace significantly after the Ba’ath Party’s rise to power in 1968, with Hussein, then the country’s vice president, later becoming president in 1979.
Ezra and his brother Khedouri Lawee were wealthy, as General Motors’ concessionaire for a region of the Middle East, licensed to sell and service that brand’s cars. They vacated their home in 1951 under duress, relocating to Montreal. Under unclear circumstances, they managed to hold on to the title of their Baghdad home and had a caretaker look after it.
The brothers claim that France started leasing the house as its embassy in 1964 and secretly continued to pay rent through 1974, even after the Ba’ath takeover, while Paris paid rent to the Iraqi treasury at the same time.
The French stopped the double payments in 1974, and Ezra Lawee told The Globe and Mail that the French would only explain that the Iraqis had sequestered the building.
“You have France sitting in a house for 55 years, not paying rent to the family that owns it,” Philip Khazzam told The Globe and Mail. “This is a world leader in human rights, and this is what they do?”
France’s foreign ministry refused to comment on the grounds of active litigation.
“France has occupied a stolen Jewish property for 50 years in full knowledge of the fact and without ever having undertaken any moral or economic redress,” Jean-Pierre Mignard, a lawyer in the case, reportedly wrote to France’s foreign minister in 2024. “This seems to me a scandal that we would do well to put an end to.”