The Jewish community’s official representative in Iran, Homayoun Sameh, has walked back criticism he made of Iran’s president, affirming Jews’ full support for the regime. Efforts are continuing to obtain the release of a Jewish protester. YNet News reports:
Houmayoun Sameh
Two Jews who were arrested on suspicion of involvement in protests in Tehran and Shiraz have been released following efforts by senior figures in Iran’s Jewish community. One Jewish detainee remains in custody, and significant efforts are also underway to secure his release.
Meanwhile, Dr. Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament, marched Wednesday alongside Hakham Hamami Lalezar , one of Iran’s rabbis, and many members of the Jewish community in a rally marking Revolution Day and expressing support for the regime. Sameh voiced full support for the authorities in Tehran, after having criticized Iran’s president several weeks ago.
A recent BBC radio programme paints a picture of ‘coexistence’ between Jews and Muslims in Morocco. ( Read Point of No Return post here). But the reporter ignores the security guards outside each Jewish site. The narrative begins in 1948, erasing centuries of persecution. The departure of Moroccan Jews was not a sudden or inexplicable rupture of a harmonious society, blogger David Collier contends. The Jews left as soon as they had somewhere to go. It was the predictable outcome of centuries of legally enforced inferiority, periodic violence, and social degradation, extensively documented by contemporary observers:
Morocco likes to project an image of interfaith harmony
The central pillar of the BBC’s podcast is the claim of historical coexistence. That claim collapses the moment one consults the historical record. We can begin 236 years ago, in 1790.
Following the death of Mohammed bin Abdallah, contemporary reports described the treatment of Morocco’s Jews in stark terms. A British newspaper, citing accounts from Gibraltar, recorded that Jews “in every part of the Empire” were “most inhumanly plundered,” with many leading Jewish merchants “assassinated in a very barbarous manner.”
This is not the language of coexistence. It is the documentary record of persecution.
In the early 1800s
In the early 1800s, An Account of the Empire of Morocco was published by James Grey Jackson, drawing on his years in Morocco as British consul. Jackson describes a society in which Jews were economically indispensable yet heavily taxed, socially degraded, and subject to legal restrictions and ritualised humiliation.
In one passage, describing popular custom and everyday language, Jackson records that Jews in Morocco were treated “somewhat worse than dogs in Christian countries:”
1834: The execution of Solika
Sol Hachuel (also known as Solika or Lalla Suleika) was a young Jewish woman from Tangier. Accused of converting to Islam and then renouncing it, she denied ever converting and refused repeated demands to accept Islam in exchange for her life. She was imprisoned, transported to Fez, and executed in 1834.
Just five years later, in 1839, The Baltimore Sun, citing a correspondent resident in Morocco retelling the story of Sol, described the Jews of the empire as “among the most degraded portions of the human family,” “politically slaves,” and living under particularly “abject” conditions:
1858: Jews as unclean animals
The Herald (Glasgow) citing a report from the French political journal Revue Contemporaine, published what it described as a “harrowing picture” of Jewish life in Morocco. The article states that Jews were regarded by Muslims as unclean animals, and enemies of god, and suggests that they were spared extermination only because they were economically useful. It describes them as bearing the condition and appearance of slaves:
1864: The relief campaign
By the 1860s, awareness of the plight of Moroccan Jewry had spread across the British Empire. In 1864, a relief campaign was launched by Sir Moses Montefiore following his visit there. A British newspaper stated that there could be “no doubt that the Jews of Morocco have been most barbarously treated by the masters of that land.” Montefiore received promises from the Sultan that Jews would be protected:
1868: The decree fails
Moses Montefiore’s 1863 visit to Morocco was prompted by a blood-libel case in the city of Safi. His subsequent campaign secured a formal decree from the Sultan affirming protection for Jews.
It appears that the decree did little to alter conditions on the ground. In 1868, The Times published correspondence from Tangier describing a religious fanatic in Tetuan who had assassinated several Jews and appeared to have devoted himself to their destruction:
1888: The value of a rat
A report on the state of the Jews originally published by the Morocco Correspondent in the Boston Evening Transcript leaves no doubt about the Jews being “despised” and “subjected to every imaginable degradation”. The report states that a local Muslim can “think no more of killing a Jew, if he can do it quietly, than of killing a rat”:
1894: Pogroms
This report from 1894 lays out a description of pogroms taking place at various sites that appear to be in the Atlas mountains around Marrakech.
Kosher food is now being served in the heart of Damascus, a development reflecting the al-Sharaa regime’s ‘encouraging’ attitude towards Jews since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, according to the New York Times.But is the newspaper ‘foodwashing’ a regime which has yet to prove its tolerance of minorities? According to The Syrian Observer, Jews are still being debarred from visiting Damascus synagogues (with thanks: Boruch):
The restaurant at the Semiramis hotel
The New York Times reports that in the kitchen of the Royal Semiramis Hotel in central Damascus, chefs recently prepared a traditional Syrian spread — hummus, muhammara and stuffed grape leaves — carefully adapted to meet Jewish dietary laws. Plates and utensils were separated, wrapped and clearly marked, while signs in English cautioned staff not to touch items designated “only for kosher food.” For chef Abd Alrahman Qahwahji, who left Syria during the civil war and worked in Lebanon and Iraq before returning, the experience was unprecedented.
He told the newspaper that although he had seen many culinary traditions abroad, this was his first encounter with kosher preparation. The initiative comes as more Syrian and non-Syrian Jews have begun visiting the country in the post-Assad period. Syria once had an estimated Jewish population of about 30,000, concentrated in Damascus, Aleppo and Qamishli. Most departed in successive waves after the creation of Israel and regional wars, with the final significant exodus occurring in the early 1990s. Today, only a handful of Jews remain in Damascus.
Joseph Jajati, a 32-year-old businessman based in New York whose family left Damascus when he was a toddler, has been instrumental in promoting renewed Jewish engagement with Syria. Through his Syrian Mosaic Foundation, he organizes group visits and envisions broader cultural initiatives, including a handicrafts center in the old city of Damascus.
The idea for a kosher kitchen at the Semiramis emerged after a group visit in September, when Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Michigan and others dined at the hotel. The meal was generous, but the rabbi could eat little beyond fruit due to dietary restrictions. The hotel’s owner, Mounzer Nazha, subsequently inquired whether a kosher kitchen could be established. When Jajati returned in December, he brought approximately 50 pounds of kosher meat from New York. The hotel purchased new grills, skewers, plates and utensils dedicated exclusively to kosher use. Jajati personally instructed the staff on the requirements, and the restaurant soon hosted its first kosher dinner during Hanukkah.
For now, the kitchen is described as “unofficially kosher,” pending formal certification by a rabbinical authority. Still, participants see the move as a symbolic step toward encouraging Syrian Jews to reconnect with their ancestral homeland. Beyond cuisine, deeper issues remain unresolved. Some Syrian Jews are seeking to reclaim properties left behind decades ago. The current government has stated that individuals who can prove ownership may recover their assets, yet practical and legal obstacles persist. Many synagogues in Damascus’ old city, once numbering more than a dozen, are shuttered and no longer in regular use.
During a recent visit, Jajati and a group toured the Elfranj synagogue in the Jewish Quarter. Under the Assad government, synagogue keys were reportedly controlled by security agencies. They are now held by a committee under the Foreign Ministry. On the day of the visit, officials overseeing restoration work declined to allow entry until cleanup was complete, a decision that frustrated Jajati, who said his parents had married there and that he himself had undergone his ritual circumcision in the building.
Later that evening, conversation returned to the possibility of transferring custody of synagogue keys to members of the Jewish community. Meanwhile, in the hotel kitchen, staff prepared rib-eye steaks in separate racks, carefully avoiding contact with nonkosher service. Trays were labeled in Arabic “Special kosher,” and gloves, utensils and serving plates were kept distinct. In the dining room, waiters placed dishes of muhammara, hummus and salads before guests. For Jajati, the meal represented more than a culinary adjustment. He had pledged during his first post-Assad visit to create at least one place in Damascus where observant Jews could dine without compromise. As the evening unfolded, he appeared satisfied that a modest yet meaningful vision was taking shape. Between courses, he reflected on his promise to fellow Syrian Jews that conditions for return, even temporary return, would gradually improve. “Promises made,” he said. “Promises kept.
The Israeli government’s decision to rescind a law (predating the Israeli occupation of 1967) preventing Jews from buying land in the West Bank has provoked predictable condemnation from the UN and media. What most reports do not say is that Jordanian and PA law were imposing the death penalty on anyone who sells land to a Jew.
A view of Hebron, with the tomb of the Patriarchs in the foreground
The approved plan also ordered the publication of land registries in the West Bank, the statement says, meaning that potential buyers will be able to identify landowners and approach them for purchasing. Until now, land registration in the West Bank had been classified.
It also repealed a legal provision that prevents non-Muslims from buying real estate in the area — a law left over from the period when Jordan controlled the territory — easing property purchases in the West Bank.
The decision also affects the site of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem by establishing “a dedicated municipal authority” responsible for cleaning and routine maintenance of the holy site.
The “pre-1967 law” was Jordan Law No. 40 of 1953 that restricted sales of land to Jordanians (with limited exceptions.) It wasn’t only for the West Bank – it was for Jordan.
And who could be a Jordanian citizen? Well, not Jews.
Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954.
So for nearly sixty years, Israel enforced a Jordanian law that was explicitly racist and antisemitic. No one seemed to have a problem with that.
But now that Israel has rescinded a racist law, and the NYT is very upset:
“The measures, which make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land and undercut the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank that it administers, appear to flout important agreements that Israel signed under the Oslo peace process decades ago.”
Hmmm, very interesting. Because in 1973, Jordan strengthened the law to say that anyone who sold land to a Jew (they used a euphemism) would get the death penalty. Israel never applied that law because it already controlled the territory, but when then PA gained autonomy, it eagerly adapted the Jordanian law to extend the death penalty to anyone who sells land to a Jew.
And only a Jew, not an Israeli. Israeli Arabs buy land and homes in PA-controlled areas.
Now, this is a violation of the Oslo Accords. Specifically, Article XVI, paragraph 2 of Oslo 2 requires that Palestinians who have “maintained contact with the Israeli authorities” will not on this account be subject to “harassment, violence, retribution or prosecution.”
Levana Zamir, head of the Association of Jews from Egypt in Israel, was interviewed on Tandem TV by William Zerbib about her efforts to secure justice for Jews expelled from Arab countries. Here is a summary of the conversation in English:
Spearheading the campaign for justice for Jews who were driven from Arab countries, including her native Egypt, Levana Zamir was given a 90-second window to address the plenum of the UN Human Rights Council. She did so – in Arabic. But the UN General Assembly has never heard the Jewish refugee case.
Levana’s wide-ranging interview with William Zerbib describes how, after 1956, 35,000 Jews were expelled by Nasser – at first 1,300 men were interned and 50 women – after Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt following Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez canal.
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries has undertaken a five-year research project to value what the Jews lost in Arab countries. Sixty billion dollars’ worth belonged to Egyptian Jews out of a total of $263 billion. The Menasche family owned half of Alexandria but Egypt could not afford to pay compensation to them.
When asked by Zerbib what compensation Algerian Jews, who were French citizens, had received, Levana said that French nationals got crumbs. Algerian Jews who went to Israel got nothing.
She explained that an international fund to compensate refugees on both sides was proposed by president Clinton at the Wye plantation talks in 2000.
Overall, she is optimistic that Jews and Arabs might reconcile. Egypt has taken steps to curb anti-Jewish incitement in schoolbooks. But there is nothing that might be done to conquer terrorism – one just had to wait until it passed – like the Barbary pirates.
The Lawee family may have lost its case for unpaid rent on the French embassy in Baghdad, but the Paris court has given them a victory of sorts by admitting that Iraq’s laws discriminate against its Jews: Lyn Julius writes on Substack:
The French embassy in Iraq is not everyone’s idea of a squat. But a squat is what this grand building in central Baghdad has become, according to the Jewish family who still officially owns it. The family, represented by Philip Khazzam, the grandson of Ezra Lawee, one of the two brothers who built the mansion in the 1930s, has been suing the French for 50 years’ worth of unpaid rent – some $22 million.
Last month a Paris court threw out the case, saying it had no jurisdiction. The family ought to be suing Iraq in an Iraqi court, it argued.
‘The idea is preposterous!’ was Philip Khazzam’s’ response, while his lawyer, Jean-Pierre Mignard, exclaimed that the family would be turning up in Baghdad in bullet-proof vests.
Iraq is no place for Jews – there are today five or fewer out of an original community of 150,000. They have been persecuted out of existence and stripped by law of their citizenship if they left the country. Their property was ‘frozen’ after the Iraqi parliament passed a law in 1951 stating that all those who renounced their Iraqi citizenship no longer had a right to their property.
But the Lawees, who had left Iraq for Canada, had retained their Iraqi citizenship into the 1960s. They began renting the building out to France in 1964. In 1969 the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein decreed that a portion of the rent should be paid in dinars to the Iraqi state. In 1971, citing a legal amendment stating that the family were no longer citizens, the regime decided that the owners were not entitled to the balance of the rent.
While France, the traditional home of human rights, has affirmed the rights of Jews whose possessions were stolen by the Nazis, the court’s judgment comes as a blow to the family. However, the verdict is a victory of sorts, as the court had for the first time admitted that Iraq ‘s laws were discriminatory.
Similar Nuremberg-style laws had been passed by almost every Arab state against their Jewish citizens. No lawyer has wanted to handle any case for compensation. There is only one case where a Jewish family managed to obtain restitution: the Cecil Hotel in Alexandria.
The time is long past for Jews who lived in Arab countries, who lost some $263 billion worth of property and assets, to obtain justice. But too many states are in denial about the mistreatment of their Jewish citizens. To recognise the wrong done to them is a start.
For their part, the Lawees have declared that they are not giving up the fight.
For the first time, a French judge has recognised that the Iraqi regime stripped the Jews of their property and assets, despite denying that the French court had jurisdiction in the Beit Lawee case. In an interview with the French-Jewish radio station Radio JDavid Dahan of the Observatoire des juifs refugiés des pays arabes ( OJRPA – JJAC France) called on Iraq to recognise its responsibility in the case.
The French embassy in Baghdad (Beit Lawee)David Dahan
In its judgment of 2 February, a French court rejected the Iraqi-Jewish family’s claims against France for unpaid rent on its embassy, arguing that the case was outside its jurisdiction.
This is the first time that a French court has recognised the Nuremberg-style laws adopted by Arab countries. These laws have never been abrogated.
Dahan affirmed his determination to get the uprooting (akira) of the Jews of the Arab world recognised.
Journalist (Radio J): This is historic. On Monday, the Paris Administrative Court recognized the existence of Iraqi racial laws that organized the dispossession of Iraqi Jews. The descendants of the owners of a private mansion in Baghdad believe they were plundered—a mansion that has housed the French Embassy in Iraq for decades. To talk about this, David Dahan is with us, president of the Observatory of Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries, committed to gaining recognition for this dispossession and the uprooting of Jews from Arab countries, known as AKIRA. Hello, David.
David Dahan: Hello, Ilana.
Journalist: Thank you very much for being with us. The court rejected your request for compensation but recognized the dispossession. Why is this important, and is it still a victory for you?
David Dahan: Well, it is a victory because, while the plaintiffs’ claim for damages was dismissed—since the administrative court declared itself incompetent to rule on Iraqi law, estimating the contract should be subject to Iraqi law—on the other hand (and I’ll take the liberty of reading the court’s reasoning), it recognizes the existence of racial laws still in force in Iraq. This is important to emphasize: “It is established that by Law No. 5 of March 10, 1951, the assets of Iraqi Jewish nationals stripped of their nationality were frozen, and that by an amendment to this law on September 25, 1967, Iraqi citizenship was withdrawn from nationals of the Jewish faith. It is also established that by a law of March 3, 1968, the Iraqi government—this was the era of Saddam Hussein—prohibited transactions related to the rental for more than one year of any property belonging to persons of the Jewish faith.” These are the types of laws the Iraqi state had adopted.
Journalist: So, the French Embassy has been “squatting” in this property, this private mansion, for over 50 years. How does the French State justify this?
David Dahan: Well, the French State doesn’t justify much because it doesn’t explain itself on this matter; at least, it doesn’t appear in the judgment or in their defense. However, we are raising the question of the problem: how can the French State continue to honor a contract now concluded with the Iraqi State—because the Iraqi State took over this property—knowing that it constitutes the handling of stolen property ? This is a crime against humanity; the French State will have to explain itself because France is subject to international law.
Journalist: Do you think this judgment, David, could create a precedent for other countries? Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Libya—where we know Jews were uprooted and stripped of their property?
David Dahan: Yes, if France indeed occupies other properties as was the case in Iraq. However, this statement of principle can certainly be used to launch legal actions against those states that adopted racial measures, notably in Syria, Egypt, and the countries you mentioned, absolutely!
Journalist: We are indeed talking about all these countries where Jews were uprooted. Do you expect to obtain reparations from them one day? That is your fight, I believe, David.
David Dahan: To be honest, we don’t really count on reparations because we know that Arab states are rather fanatical dictatorships and it is likely they will never pay a cent. On the other hand, obtaining a judgment of principle against them would be important for us, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, because we are entitled to justice as well, and these states must assume their responsibilities, whether this happens from a political or judicial standpoint, or through the spontaneous recognition of these states… we live in hope.
Journalist: Yes, we hope so. Nearly one million Jews were driven out of Arab countries between 1948 and 1970. Why does this history remain so unknown in your opinion, David?
David Dahan: Quite simply because a fantasy was established by the Western world, which consists of saying that all Jews lived in a happy nostalgia in Arab countries, that everything always went very well, and that if they left overnight—almost all of them simultaneously, abandoning all their property—well, it was by magic or something like that. It’s partly because in the West, we don’t dare to recognize that the West committed misdeeds; except the West recognizes them—France recognizes what happened during World War II, as does Germany—whereas in Arab states, they don’t. We imagine—it’s a bit like the “noble savage” theory, you know: they can’t do harm, so these states are treated as if they were almost not responsible.
Journalist: Can we remind ourselves of the figure? Has it been calculated exactly how much was stolen from Jews in Arab countries?
David Dahan: Yes, absolutely. There were even two studies that confirmed this figure: it is 250 billion current dollars. ($263 billion – ed)
Journalist: Well, thank you very much, David Dahan. Perhaps a final word to conclude?
David Dahan: Yes, if there is one message to get across this morning, it is that Jews must participate in this fight; Jews must stand by their claims and not hesitate to join us.
At this time of year, when the Torah portion of Yitro, Moses’s father-in-law, is read, Tunisian Jews celebrate a tradition unique to them: Seudat Yitro. The festival is supposed to have originated in the 19th century when a jaundice epidemic spread among the cities and killed mainly children and infants. But the epidemic ceased abruptly when Parashat Yitro was read. The table is set as for a child’s tea party. Vered Guttman explains:
The Feast of Jethro, or Seudat Yitro in Hebrew, is an ancient tradition celebrated on the Thursday before parashat Jethro by Tunisian Jews (which is close to the holiday of Tu B’Shvat.) The holiday is also known as the Festival of Sons, a feast that celebrates the sons of the family (and yes, Festival of Daughters is a thing too. Read all about it here.) Since the festive meal is served to children, it is treated almost like a dolls party – the meal is served on small dishes only, including mini cups and flatware (think of saucers for plates, dessert forks and shot glasses.) Mini challahs are baked and cookies, marzipan and candies in the shapes of children and animals are part of the feast.
The meal used to start with a table covered with sweets, including candies, halva and Tunisian staples like makroud (farina and date cookies) and debla, rose-shaped fried cookies (in the photo above.) Tunisian Jews who emigrated to France added Pièce Montée (croquembouche) as a regular component of the feast.
The sweet opening was followed by a meal of vegetable pies called maakouda (here’s one example), salads, green fava beans, and the main course was always stuffed pigeon, another “kid size” dish that comes instead of stuffed chicken. Another reason for serving pigeon relates to one of the reasons for marking the Festival of Sons. According to Daat website for Jewish and spiritual studies, there was a mysterious pandemic that caused the death of boys in the community, and serving pigeon meat helped cure and defeat the disease. There’s also a tradition that says that the pandemic ended on the week of Parashat Jethro (Jethro Torah portion) and that’s why the holiday is celebrated on this week. By the way, pigeons were always a part of the Arab cuisine but are hard to find in Israel or in America.
Our history under Islamic rule exposes the moral bankruptcy of anti-Zionism and the fantasy that Jews can survive without sovereignty. The Jewish world’s failure to teach this history is dangerous, argues Rachel Wahba in Times of Israel:
Rachel Wahba and her father’s photos on his cancelled Egyptian passport (Courtesy)
It is critical to understand, hard as it may be for those who grew up free outside the Middle East and North Africa, that Jews being sovereign in what is considered “their region” ever since the Muslim conquest, is haram, a sin, unnatural.
There was a time in Persia in which when it started to rain, Jewish shopkeepers shuttered up their shops as quickly as they could and ran home. No, not because they were scared of the rain, but because they could be killed if a raindrop hit them: The rain that touched the Jew would pollute the earth.
For American Jews to imagine this reality is a stretch. It wasn’t a stretch for my mother, who watched the Shia date merchant wash his hands to cleanse himself after doing business with the Jew, her father, in Basra when she was a little girl. As a Jew, she was subject to demeaning slurs and threats every day on the streets of Baghdad on her way home from school.
There are no Jews left in my parents’ native lands. There was an equal number of displaced Jews from Arab lands as Arabs displaced from Israel in 1948. This should be common knowledge. We did not remain “refugees” after we were forced out, kicked out, ethnically cleansed from all over the Middle East and North Africa. We struggled in a new Israel, run by Western Jews. It was not easy. Racism was rife; we were the “primitive” Arab Jews to Ashkenazim wanting Israel to be Austria, while Arab nations waged one war after another.
There was plenty of land in the Arab world to allow displaced people a home. There was one reason not to, and to keep these people indoctrinated to hate Jews in refugee camps. One reason to create generations of a stateless population, from whom massive funds are denied and are used instead for war against the Jews.
It is the same reason Hamas has cynically told us with utmost cruelty how it works for them: The more Palestinians that suffer and die, the sooner the world will turn against Jews, and the sooner Israel will be destroyed. It’s not complicated. Wage war on Israel, have Israel fight for her survival in terrible wars, and have the world turn on Israel.
The anti-Israel crowd goosesteps towards Islamist goals, and somehow doesn’t have the bandwidth to ask what the hell is going on as Hamas, Iran’s proxy, goes genocidally wild, and the Islamic regime of Iran slaughters tens of thousands of feminists and poets and people who want to be free.
There is something very wrong with Jews who think being anti-Zionist is a badge of honor, who want to be loved by friends who feel sexy wrapped in keffiyehs. Jews who march on the streets all over the West with their non-Jewish “anti-Zionists” blabbing Palestinianism, the death cult ideology/religion that is based on genocide of Jews, are obscene.
But of course, if we don’t know the history, and identify with how “from the River to the Sea Palestine will be free” rhymes, as if it’s some chant from the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, we are an easy mark for anti-West ideologies and Islamists who know exactly what they are doing.
A Paris court has thrown out the case brought by the Lawee family for unpaid rent on the French embassy in Baghdad, implying that the family should risk their lives by turning to a partial Iraqi court. While the Lawee brothers were not subject to the 1951 law that seized Jewish assets, the French government’s defence relies on a 1967 amendment that froze the assets of any Iraqi Jew that obtained another citizenship and did not disclose it. The Lawees obtained their Canadian citizenship in 1967. The family have vowed to continue their fight for justice. Shirli Sitbon reports in Haaretz:
Ezra, left, and Khedouri Lawee (Photo courtesy: Philip Khazzam)
“I’m disappointed, because I believed this was a true tribunal, but instead what I see is that it is nothing but a mouthpiece repeating the same fiction France has been feeding us for years: that France has no jurisdiction over its own embassy. I feel embarrassed for France,” says Philip Khazzam, the grandson of Ezra Lawee.
In its ruling, the court wrote that the contract signed in 1964 was not subject to French law because it “does not stipulate that the parties wanted it to be subject to French law.”
“The fact that the contract was written in French, was signed by a representative of the French state to house a French public service and that part of the rent was paid in France in francs until 1974, or that the contract doesn’t mention an Iraqi jurisdiction in case of a dispute, does not prove the parties wanted the contract to be subjected to French law,” the court wrote in the ruling.
“The court doesn’t tell the family whom it should turn to,” Jean-Pierre Mignard, the lawyer representing the Lawee family, told Haaretz. “We can only deduce that the only competent court is Baghdad’s Shi’ite court, which is part of Iraq’s institutions. It cannot be impartial in such a case.
“Imagine the Lawees, an Iraqi Jewish family, going to Baghdad, to seek justice and reparations. It’s surreal. It’s unthinkable. Can you imagine us going to the Baghdad court with bulletproof vests. Our clients wouldn’t even be able to go to Iraq. This decision means my clients have no access to a judge or a court.”
In a hearing last month, France’s public legal adviser argued the court should declare itself incompetent because “The contract does not stipulate that it abides by French law; therefore we can assume Iraqi law should be applied. It is not impossible to get a ruling from the Iraqi state.”
It’s a majestic house in the Abu Nawas neighborhood of Baghdad, near the Tigris River. It appears frozen in time in the Lawee family’s black-and-white photographs.
The Lawee family built the house in the 1930s and lived in it until 1948, when the family immigrated to Canada. Their departure was influenced heavily by the Farhud, the pogrom carried out by mobs against Baghdad’s Jewish community from June 1–2, 1941 that killed at least 180 people and wounded thousands.
“My grandfather knew the king, and his contacts advised him to leave because the situation would only become more dangerous for Jews. The king was later beheaded,” Khazzam said.
The Lawee brothers were able to maintain ownership of the house by moving to Canada in 1948, since several members of their family remained in their home when Iraq passed its 1951 law seizing the property of Jews who had left the country.
In 1964 they found what they believed to be the ideal tenant: the French state.
“They thought that by renting the house, they could potentially return to it, and in any case, their house would being occupied meant it was better preserved from squatters,” Khazzam explained.
Little did the brothers know that 62 years after they rented their home, they would accuse the French government of squatting in their family home in court.
While the Lawee brothers were not subject to the 1951 law that seized Jewish assets, the French government’s defense relies on a 1967 amendment that froze the assets of any Iraqi Jew that obtained another citizenship and did not disclose it. The Lawees obtained their Canadian citizenship in 1967.
The Iraqi Ba’ath party came to power in 1969 and, citing the new amendment, demanded to be the sole beneficiary of the rent payments, according to court documents. The French Embassy continued to pay rent to the Lawee family for another five years, until the payments stopped in 1974.
In 1978, the French Embassy signed a new lease – this time with Iraq’s Secretary-General for the Administration of Property of Jews Stripped of Iraqi Nationality. In 1983, the French Embassy signed a new contract directly with the city of Baghdad, which has since been renewed several times, according to court documents.
The Lawee house has become a symbol that tells not only the story of the family who was forced to abandon it, but also the fate of the 135,000 Iraqi Jews who lived and thrived in Iraq for 2,600 years until they were forced out of their homes and to surrender their possessions.
According to Georges Bensoussan, a Jewish historian born in Morocco, France’s position on the dispossession of Jews in Nazi Germany versus Arab countries highlights a “double standard.”
“One reason is that there was such a focus on World War II looting France was forced to create a commission to deal with the issue. But what happened with Jews in the Arab world has remained under the radar, so France chose to entirely ignore the issue and the case of the embassy,” Bensoussan said.
“People don’t really know about the story of Jews from the Arab world – it’s not taught in school, and some people don’t really want to know, because they think that criticizing Arab countries’ attitude could get them into trouble.”
This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, of the Middle East and North Africa, documenting the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution.
Point of No Return
Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries
One-stop blog on the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees - updated daily.
