A Postwar Crime in the Shadow of Vichy and the Shoah
In the heart of Baghdad stands a grand mansion of white stucco and architectural elegance. Ornate balconies frame its façade, carved columns support its porches, and date palms shade its sprawling grounds. Inside, grand mirrors reflect marble mantels, and a swimming pool glimmers in the courtyard. For more than five decades, this house has served as the French embassy to Iraq. But the story of Beit Lawee—the House of Lawee—is not one of diplomatic achievement. It is a story of theft, of broken promises, and of a Western democratic nation that refuses to pay rent or acknowledge the family whose property it has occupied since 1970.
This is the story of the Lawee brothers, Ezra and Khedouri, who built this magnificent home in Baghdad during the prosperous mid-twentieth century when Iraqi Jews represented one-third of Baghdad’s population and constituted one of the world’s great Jewish communities. This is the story of their grandchildren, now living in Montreal, who are fighting through French courts to reclaim what France has stolen from them. And this is the story of how one of the world’s “great democracies” has become complicit in the ongoing spoliation of Jewish property—a crime it claims to abhor when the perpetrators are Nazis but apparently finds acceptable when the victims are Middle Eastern Jews and the beneficiary is France itself.
The Lawee brothers’ story begins in a world of vanished splendor. At the beginning of the 1940s, Iraq’s Jewish community numbered approximately 150,000 souls, constituting roughly one-third of Baghdad’s population. This was not a marginalized minority clinging to survival’s edges. Iraqi Jews were merchants, bankers, professionals, scholars, and property owners deeply integrated into every sector of Baghdad’s economic and cultural life. They maintained sophisticated educational institutions, beautiful synagogues, and vibrant community organizations. The community traced its origins back 2,700 years to the Babylonian exile of 587 BCE—making it one of the world’s most ancient Jewish communities, far older than most Arab populations in the region.
Ezra and Khedouri Lawee exemplified this prosperous bourgeoisie. Successful businessmen, they had built their elegant mansion as a testament to their success and their integration into Baghdad’s elite. Beit Lawee represented the culmination of their achievements—a symbol of permanence, of belonging, of roots planted deep in Iraqi soil.
Then everything changed.
On June 1-2, 1941, Baghdad erupted in the Farhud, a savage pogrom that killed, raped, robbed, and looted Jewish properties. The very word “Farhud”—loosely translating to “devour” or “gobble” in Arabic—captures the ferocity of the violence. This watershed moment marked the beginning of the end for Iraq’s ancient Jewish community. The violence that followed was not random; it was coordinated, escalating, terrifying. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, conditions deteriorated catastrophically.
In 1950-1951, during what became known as the “denationalization” period, the Iraqi government enacted comprehensive legislation designed to strip Jews of their citizenship, their nationality, and their property. Law No. 5 of 1951 specifically froze the property of Jews who left Iraq after January 1948 and authorized confiscation of properties belonging to those who failed to return. The law created a deliberate legal trap: Jews faced persecution and death if they remained, but lost everything if they fled. The bombs fell on synagogues and Jewish businesses. The terror was designed to force departure while ensuring that Jews departed propertyless.
The financial devastation was staggering. Estimates placed the total property losses imposed on Iraqi Jews at hundreds of millions of dollars at the time—roughly $34 billion in contemporary currency for Iraq alone. Across all Arab countries and Iran, approximately 850,000 to one million Jews fled between 1948 and the early 1970s, losing property worth more than $100 billion in current money. The Lawee brothers were among them.
More than 100,000 Iraqi Jews were airlifted to safety through Operation Ezra and Nehemiah in 1950-1951. Khedouri traveled first to London, then New York, before finally settling in Montreal. Ezra took a different path—through Israel, Egypt, and New York—before also making Montreal his home. They became proud Canadians, building successful real estate businesses and raising families in a great Jewish center thousands of kilometers from Baghdad. But they never forgot Beit Lawee.
Remarkably, despite fleeing Iraq in the early 1950s, the Lawee brothers took concrete steps to maintain their property. They hired a caretaker to look after their now-vacant house, demonstrating unequivocal intent to preserve ownership rights and eventual return or use. This detail would later prove crucial—it proved the brothers had not abandoned their property but were protecting what they could while waiting for circumstances that might allow recovery. Most crucially, throughout all the tumult and displacement, the family retained their title to Beit Lawee. The property remained registered in their name—a fact that would eventually become dispositive in the courts.
In the early 1960s, during a brief period of Iraqi legal reform, French officials seeking a suitable location for a new embassy learned about Beit Lawee. The property was perfect—grand, strategically located, with the spacious grounds and multiple rooms appropriate for diplomatic purposes. In 1963-1964, France entered into a lease agreement with the Lawee brothers, who were by then living in Canada as established Canadian citizens. This lease agreement would become the smoking gun—the documentary evidence that proves everything France would later deny.
Under the agreement, the Lawee brothers granted France use of their property as the French embassy in Baghdad. The lease stipulated dual payments: nominal rent in Iraqi dinars to satisfy local legal requirements, plus substantial rent in French francs paid directly to the Lawee family. This sophisticated legal structure, negotiated between the brothers and French officials, accomplished multiple objectives simultaneously: it provided real compensation to the exiled owners while navigating Iraqi legal restrictions on Jewish property. The franc payments constituted what Philip Khazzam, Ezra’s grandson, later characterized as “a modicum of financial compensation for the Lawees’ effective expulsion from Iraq.” This was more than merely a commercial transaction. It was explicit, documented recognition by the French Republic that the Lawee brothers owned Beit Lawee and retained rights to compensation for its use. France paid rent to them as landlords. France deposited the lease agreement in its official government archives in Paris. France acknowledged, in writing and in practice, the Lawees’ ownership of the property they had built.
For several years during the mid-1960s, this arrangement functioned as intended. France paid the brothers rent. The family received compensation for their loss. The legal relationship was clear and documented. Then, in 1967, the Ba’ath Party came to power in Iraq following the Six-Day War. The new regime, under Saddam Hussein’s growing influence, immediately seized control of remaining Jewish properties, implementing what Philip Khazzam would later describe as “freezing” rather than outright “expropriation”—a critical legal distinction. The property was formally sequestered, placed under state administrative control. But significantly, it was never legally transferred. The ownership title remained registered in the Lawee family name. Iraq had assumed control of use and could extract economic benefit, but the Lawees technically retained legal ownership. The property was frozen—accessible use and transfer suspended—but not expropriated—ownership transferred to the state.
The Ba’athist government then issued a directive to France: cease paying the Lawee family rent and redirect all payments to the Iraqi Treasury instead.
France complied.
This was the moment of moral choice, the moment when France decided to participate actively in the dispossession of a refugee family rather than honor its contractual obligations. France stopped paying the brothers. France began paying Iraq. France switched its recognition of ownership from the legitimate titleholders—the family that had built the house—to a government that had stolen it through discriminatory legislation targeting Jews. For fifty-five years after 1970, France would occupy Beit Lawee without paying the Lawee family a single dinar, a single dirham, a single dollar, a single euro. Not one.
The injustice was compounded by another crime: France did not even pay Iraq market rates for the property. Philip Khazzam discovered that France paid Iraq “maybe a tenth of what it should have gone for.” France secured a sweetheart deal—occupying a multimillion-dollar property for roughly ten percent of its fair market rental value while the actual owners, living in exile, received absolutely nothing. Think about this: France benefited from stolen property at ninety percent below fair market rates. For fifty-five years. The 2004 reopening of the Baghdad embassy following years of closure during the Gulf War and Iraq War provided an opportunity for France to rectify this situation. Instead, France simply continued the arrangement, as if nothing had changed, as if the theft had never occurred. The property itself, miraculously, survived decades of dictatorship, war, international sanctions, and diplomatic upheaval. Beit Lawee stood intact, maintained through France’s occupation. Its ornate balconies, carved columns, grand mirrors, and marble mantels remained—physical testaments to the Lawee brothers’ success and the world they had built and been forced to abandon.
By 2004, when the Baghdad embassy reopened, Beit Lawee’s prime location in Baghdad made it extraordinarily valuable. Iraqi certifiers valued the property at more than $22 million. The unpaid rent alone—calculated as the difference between what France should have paid at fair market rates and what France actually paid—exceeded $20 million and was “counting,” accumulating with each passing year. Philip Khazzam articulated the essential injustice with brutal clarity: “France is using our house, so France can choose to pay for the house it’s using. Instead, it pretends to have no authority and hides behind Iraq. They knew if they took over, we’d charge them the full rent. They took advantage of a family.” This was not a technical legal dispute over murky ownership claims. This was France knowingly, deliberately exploiting a refugee family to maintain below-market occupancy of stolen property. France had the archived lease proving ownership recognition. France had previously paid the brothers as owners. France had switched payments not because Iraqi law necessitated it but because doing so reduced France’s costs. France had made a calculated choice to benefit from theft at the Lawees’ expense.
For decades after the property’s seizure, the Lawee family pursued various avenues seeking to address the injustice, with limited success. But a crucial transformation occurred when the Baghdad embassy reopened in 2004. Philip Khazzam, grandson of Ezra, experienced what he describes as a sudden realization. “All of a sudden, something hit me,” he explains, “and I realized this is not just about a property. It’s not just the house, it’s human rights. And France has trampled all over human rights. And just the unfairness of the whole situation led me to take action.” This evolution from viewing the dispute as a property claim to recognizing it as a human rights violation represented a crucial shift in understanding. What began as an individual family grievance transformed into recognition of systemic injustice. Khazzam came to understand that his family’s struggle represented the experiences of 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries whose property losses remained uncompensated and whose suffering had been ignored by the international community. He articulated hope that France would honor its stated values: “France, the birthplace of the rights of man, would recognize an unjust situation and come to a settlement, do something decent.”
In 2021, Khazzam and several cousins made a fateful decision. They hired Jean-Pierre Mignard, a French attorney, to pursue formal legal action. Mignard’s first step was reaching out directly to then-Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, requesting access to France’s records regarding the property. Le Drian agreed to search French government archives. What he found was a bombshell: the 1964 lease agreement, carefully preserved in official French government files. The document was irrefutable—France’s own archival record, an official state instrument (acte authentique) carrying presumption of accuracy under French law. It proved beyond any doubt that France had knowingly contracted with the Lawee brothers as owners in 1964, had recognized their legal title, had paid them rent as landlords, and had thereby established its own institutional knowledge of their ownership.
In the winter of 2024, Mignard wrote a powerful letter to the Foreign Minister, characterizing France’s conduct in terms of moral indictment: “France has occupied a stolen Jewish property for fifty years in full knowledge of the fact and without ever having undertaken any moral or economic redress. This seems to me a scandal that we would do well to put an end to.” Mignard’s language was direct and devastating. France’s conduct was not a technical property dispute but a “scandal”—a knowing, deliberate exploitation of refugee families to maintain below-market occupancy of stolen property.
In early 2025, Khazzam and Mignard filed a formal lawsuit in French courts. The complaint sought $26 million in damages:
- $17 million in back rent, representing unpaid rental income from the 1970s through 2025
- $9 million in moral damages, compensating for emotional distress, dignitary harm, and violation of fundamental human rights
These figures represented conservative calculations. Given the property’s $22+ million current value and decades of below-market occupation, the family could reasonably demand far more. But they started with claims supported by professional Iraqi certifiers’ valuations and clear documentary evidence. The family also offered to mediate. Perhaps France would recognize the injustice, negotiate settlement, and resolve the matter privately. Perhaps France would choose to “do the decent thing,” as Khazzam hoped. France was given until May 15, 2025 to respond to the mediation offer. France did not respond.
France’s silence was deafening. It revealed France’s strategic calculation: stonewall, deploy procedural defenses, avoid substantive engagement with the merits. Force the refugee family through expensive, prolonged litigation rather than acknowledge the injustice or negotiate in good faith. France’s refusal to even mediate spoke volumes. A powerful state refused dialogue with a refugee family. The “birthplace of the rights of man” rejected peaceful dispute resolution. A democratic government chose adversarial confrontation over compromise. A self-proclaimed human rights champion displayed indifference to victims’ claims. France revealed itself as willing to sacrifice principle for diplomatic convenience and financial savings.
As the case proceeds through French courts toward a hearing date yet to be publicly announced, multiple legal theories support the Lawee family’s claims. The foundational claim rests on enrichissement sans cause—unjust enrichment—codified in Articles 1303-1304 of the French Civil Code. The doctrine is elegantly simple: no party should be permitted to retain benefits at another’s expense when it would be unjust to allow such retention. France has been enriched through decades of rent-free occupation (from the owners’ perspective) of a multimillion-dollar property, paying below-market rent to Iraq rather than the rightful owners. The Lawee family has suffered corresponding deprivation through lost rental income spanning fifty-five years. The causal connection is direct: the property France occupies is precisely the property from which the Lawees have been deprived of income. Crucially, France has no legal justification for this enrichment. The archival lease proves France previously recognized Lawee ownership. Iraq itself acknowledges the family retained title through freezing rather than expropriation. France cannot claim force majeure—paying rightful owners rather than Iraq remained physically and legally possible. France cannot invoke good faith—its own archives prove institutional knowledge of Lawee ownership. France cannot assert Iraqi law provides justification—the property was frozen, meaning Iraqi law itself recognized continuing Lawee ownership.
Under French jurisprudence, enrichment encompasses not merely direct monetary gain but also avoided costs. France’s enrichment thus includes: rental value at fair market rates (estimated at ten times what France pays Iraq); avoided acquisition costs of purchasing or constructing alternative embassy premises; strategic value of maintaining diplomatic presence in prime Baghdad locations; and opportunity cost advantages. The Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court, has consistently held that enrichment includes these avoided costs (économies réalisées). France’s ninety-percent discount on fair market rent represents direct enrichment that cannot be justified by contract, legal obligation, or voluntary liberality.
The 1964 lease created express contractual obligations. France entered into a written agreement with the Lawee brothers as recognized owners, stipulating payment of substantial rent in French francs directly to them. For several years in the mid-1960s, France performed these obligations, paying the brothers directly. France’s unilateral cessation of payments to the Lawees—without their consent or legal justification—constitutes material breach of contract under French contract law (droit des contrats). France cannot claim the Lawees consented to payment redirection; they explicitly did not. The archival records show France simply changed course to accommodate Ba’athist demands. Standard contract damages would include: lost rental income calculated at fair market rates; time value of money over five decades; and consequential damages from inability to use or dispose of the property.
France’s defense brief argues that Iraqi Law No. 5 of 1951 extinguished Lawee ownership. But French courts possess a powerful tool to reject this argument: the exception d’ordre public—the public policy exception to application of foreign laws. French private international law, elaborated through centuries of jurisprudence, employs this doctrine as a fundamental safeguard against application of foreign laws that violate essential French values. Iraqi Law No. 5 of 1951 explicitly targeted Jews for property confiscation based on religious identity and flight from persecution. This discriminatory legislation violates substantive ordre public—fundamental principles of French constitutional and international human rights law. The Conseil constitutionnel, in its 2019 decision affirming that equality before the law and non-discrimination constitute fundamental principles of constitutional value, established that French courts cannot apply foreign legislation directly contradicting these imperatives. France’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights—incorporated into French law with supra-legislative status—further reinforce this barrier. The European Court of Human Rights has established in cases including Chassagnou and Others v. France (1999) and Kurić and Others v. Slovenia (2012) that property deprivations motivated by discriminatory animus violate Convention rights even when authorized by domestic legislation. French courts applying ECHR law cannot enforce discriminatory Iraqi legislation.
The doctrine of estoppel (l’irrecevabilité pour contradiction) provides additional grounds for rejecting France’s Iraqi law defense. Having entered into a lease agreement with the Lawee brothers in 1964, paid rent to them as recognized owners, and archived this contractual relationship in official government records, France cannot now invoke Iraqi law to deny the ownership it previously acknowledged. The Cour de cassation has consistently held that parties cannot adopt contradictory positions to another’s detriment, particularly when the contradicted position appears in official state documents. France cannot benefit from Lawee ownership recognition during the convenient 1964-1970 period while later denying that ownership to avoid compensation.
Beyond French domestic law, international legal principles establish France’s liability. The International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility reflect customary international law regarding state liability. Article 16 ARSIWA addresses “aid or assistance in the commission of an internationally wrongful act,” establishing that a state bears responsibility if it “aids or assists another State” with knowledge of the circumstances. Iraq’s discriminatory confiscation of Jewish property constituted an internationally wrongful act—systematic religious persecution violating customary international law and multiple human rights treaty obligations. France, with knowledge of this wrongful act (as evidenced by the archival lease showing France knew the Lawees owned the property), provided assistance by redirecting rent payments to Iraq following the Ba’athist sequestration.
This assistance was not passive acquiescence but active facilitation. By paying Iraq rather than owners, France provided economic benefit helping Iraq realize gains from wrongful confiscation. Each rental payment represented fresh assistance in maintaining dispossession.
The case’s most compelling dimension involves France’s shattered credibility regarding historical justice. In 2023, the French National Assembly passed the Heritage Code Amendment, expanding legal frameworks for restituting artworks and cultural property looted by Nazis between 1933 and 1945. France formally recognized that discriminatory laws enacted by criminal regimes cannot legitimize theft. The amendment established clear principles: Nazi “legalization” of Jewish property confiscation through discriminatory legislation cannot create valid title; passage of time does not extinguish claims to confiscated property; current possessors must actively research provenance and initiate restitution; descendants of dispossessed owners retain claims regardless of whether original owners survived. These principles apply with equal force to the Lawee case. Iraqi Law No. 5 of 1951, like Nazi confiscation laws, explicitly targeted Jews based on religious identity and flight from persecution. Both regimes employed discriminatory legislation to give veneer of legality to systematic theft. Both created terror forcing Jews to flee while ensuring they departed propertyless. Both produced massive intergenerational trauma and continuing economic deprivation.
Yet France applies different standards. European Jews dispossessed by Nazis deserve restitution; Middle Eastern Jews dispossessed by Arab governments apparently do not. This is not principled law. This is selective application of human rights principles based on diplomatic convenience. Philip Khazzam’s question cuts to the heart of France’s hypocrisy: “If France is agreeing to return stolen art to the descendants of the original owners, how can it then justify continuing to use the house seized from Ezra and Khedouri Lawee?”
France cannot articulate a principled answer.
The Lawee family’s case crystallizes a massive, largely ignored refugee crisis affecting approximately 850,000 to one million Jews forced from Arab countries and Iran between 1948 and the early 1970s. This displacement decimated communities with roots extending back 2,700 years—predating Arab arrival in these regions by centuries. In Iraq specifically, approximately 120,000-130,000 Jews (from a population of 150,000) departed between 1950-1952, virtually eliminating a community traced to the Babylonian exile of 587 BCE. Morocco lost over 250,000 Jews; Yemen’s entire community of 50,000 left; Libya’s 38,000 fled; Egypt expelled tens of thousands; Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Algeria each lost tens of thousands. Stanley Urman of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries reports that Iraqi Jews alone lost property worth $34 billion in current currency. Across all Arab countries and Iran, losses exceed $100-150 billion. These figures encompass residential properties, commercial enterprises, bank accounts, personal possessions, and communal property accumulated over millennia.
Yet this refugee crisis remains largely absent from international discourse. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), established exclusively for Palestinian refugees, receives hundreds of millions in annual funding and employs over 30,000 staff. No comparable mechanism exists for Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The United Nations has passed numerous resolutions addressing Palestinian claims; not one addresses Jewish claims. This asymmetry reflects political dynamics rather than legal or moral distinctions. Arab states refuse acknowledgment of responsibility. Israel absorbed most refugees and historically discouraged dwelling on losses. Western nations lack incentive to raise uncomfortable questions about Arab allies’ treatment of Jewish minorities.
The Lawee case challenges this silence by targeting a Western, democratic defendant rather than an undemocratic Arab regime. As Khazzam explains, few expect Egypt or Jordan to compensate Jewish property claims, but France—”the birthplace of the Enlightenment”—represents a different moral standard. This strategic forum selection reflects realistic assessment that justice is more achievable through Western legal systems than through Arab courts hostile to Jewish claimants. During legal proceedings, a critical revelation emerged. Multiple Iraqi prime ministers, according to Khazzam, have given “nods” to unfreezing the Lawee property. More significantly, Iraq itself acknowledges the Lawee family’s ownership and approves of returning the property to them. This discovery devastates France’s central defense. France has argued Iraqi courts should decide the case. But Iraq doesn’t contest Lawee ownership. Iraq acknowledges it was frozen rather than expropriated—meaning the family retained legal title throughout. Iraq is willing to cooperate.
“The real problem is not the Iraqi side,” Khazzam explains, “but the French government.” This admission proves that France, not Iraq, stands between the family and justice. France is the willing occupant of stolen property. France is the party refusing to pay. France is the nation committing the ongoing spoliation. The distinction between “freezing” and “expropriation” under Iraqi law proves legally dispositive. If Beit Lawee was frozen rather than expropriated, the Lawee family retained ownership under Iraqi law itself. The Iraqi state assumed administrative control and economic usufruct but never acquired title. Ownership remained registered in the family name. France cannot invoke Iraqi law as extinguishing rights when Iraq itself acknowledges continuing Lawee ownership.
As of November 2025, the case remains in preliminary stages of French judicial proceedings. Following France’s refusal to respond to mediation proposals by May 15, 2025, the French tribunal accepted the case for adjudication. A hearing date has not yet been publicly announced, but typical French civil procedure suggests scheduling within several months. The Code de procédure civile provides for extensive pre-hearing procedures. Parties exchange written submissions (conclusions) setting forth legal arguments and factual allegations. Documentary exchange (communication de pièces) allows each party to request documents in the other’s possession. Expert testimony rules allow for property valuation experts to assess fair market rental rates and current property values. France will likely file preliminary exceptions (exceptions de procédure) challenging jurisdiction, invoking diplomatic immunity, and asserting statutes of limitations. The tribunal must resolve these threshold issues before reaching substantive questions about unjust enrichment, contract breach, and property ownership.
Given typical French civil procedure timelines, a substantive hearing could occur anywhere from late 2025 through mid-2026, with judgment potentially rendered months thereafter. Appeals through the Cour d’appel (appellate court) and potentially to the Cour de cassation (supreme court) could extend final resolution by years. Yet the case’s clear evidentiary foundation—the archival lease, France’s prior recognition of ownership, Iraq’s acknowledgment of continuing Lawee title, professional valuations—may encourage settlement before final judgment. The family’s stated preference for France to pay back rent and purchase the property provides a straightforward resolution framework. Total settlement (back rent, property value, moral damages, legal costs) would likely range $45-60 million. Substantial, but hardly beyond France’s capacity. Potentially cheaper than prolonged litigation costs, potential adverse judgment, and mounting reputational damage.
France now faces a clear moral and legal choice. It can honor its professed values by acknowledging the Lawee family’s ownership, compensating them fairly for fifty-five years of unpaid rent and below-market occupation, negotiating settlement, and establishing principled standards for addressing similar claims. Or it can continue stonewalling, prioritizing diplomatic convenience and financial considerations, thereby revealing that its human rights advocacy is selective propaganda applied only when politically advantageous. The grand, white stucco building in Baghdad—with its ornate balconies, carved columns, date palms, fountains, and swimming pool—stands as physical witness to both what was lost and what might be reclaimed. Beit Lawee, the House of Lawee, has survived decades of dictatorship, war, diplomatic upheaval, and fifty-five years of foreign occupation. It remains standing, intact, functional. It has never forgotten its rightful owners.
The Lawee family has demonstrated remarkable patience. They fled persecution, built new lives in Montreal, maintained their ownership through hired caretakers, accepted France’s initial lease arrangement, endured decades of spoliation, and only now—seventy-five years after the brothers’ flight—are pursuing justice through courts. They have offered France opportunities to settle, to mediate, to resolve the matter without judgment. Philip Khazzam articulates the essential moral claim with crystalline clarity: “You have France sitting in a house for fifty-five years, not paying rent to the family that owns it. This is a world leader in human rights and this is what they do?”
The question demands an answer. French courts will provide it—either through settlement or judgment. The answer France gives will define its commitment to the principles it claims to champion and establish whether justice for Middle Eastern Jewish refugees is achievable reality or permanent aspiration. The moral imperative admits no ambiguity: France must acknowledge what it has done, compensate the family it has wronged, and demonstrate that human rights principles apply universally—not selectively based on geography, diplomatic convenience, or the political powerlessness of victims.
Beit Lawee awaits justice. The Lawee family awaits recognition. France awaits its reckoning.
It must finally do “the decent thing.”
