Although Montrealer Philip Khazzam has never set foot inside his family’s nearly century-old mansion in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, he has heard many stories about the lush gardens, fountains, pool and bedrooms—enough to sleep 12 people.
The residence, built in 1935, was home to his grandparents and great-uncle’s family, brothers Ezra and Khedouri Lawee, themselves wealthy Jewish automobile dealers and pillars of Iraq’s business community.
They lived there for more than decade, until growing support for Nazism in Iraq during the Second World War and widespread resentment of Israel in the years afterward made life dangerous for the historic Jewish community. Some 130,000 Iraqi Jews were forced to give up their citizenship and leave behind all their property in exchange for a permit to flee the country in 1951-52.
The ancestral home, still in the family’s name, was eventually rented out to the French government as an embassy. But 35 years ago, in 1968, a coup brought dictator Saddam Hussein to power. His regime froze the family’s ownership and ordered France to pay the rent directly to his government instead.
Philip Khazzam has spent years pursuing Iraq for the legal rights to his family’s stolen house. He is also suing the French government for $30 million in back rent.
On today’s episode of North Star, The CJN’s flagship news podcast, host Ellin Bessner catches up with Philip Khazzam to learn why he is continuing this multigenerational fight for his family’s lost patrimony.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: That’s the sound from a 2007 documentary about the Embassy of France building in Baghdad, Iraq. A high-ranking French minister was paying a visit at the time on a crucial diplomatic mission, not long after the U.S.-led war on Iraq toppled dictator Saddam Hussein on the pretext that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and supporting Al-Qaeda. But Montrealer Philip Kazzam likes to watch the video for a different reason, because it gives him a glimpse inside the building which his family calls Beit Lawee. Â
The embassy is using the mansion built by his grandfather Ezra and great-uncle Khedouri in 1935. The two brothers owned the General Motors franchise in the region and were wealthy pillars of Iraq’s historic Jewish community. But after a 1941 pogrom called the Farhud killed nearly 200 Iraqi Jews, the Lawee family decided to flee, along with most of the country’s Jewish community–amidst widespread support there for Hitler’s Nazi policies during the Second World War, and later, hatred for the new State of Israel and its expulsion of Palestinians.Â
While about 150,000 Iraqis were lifted to Israel during a special rescue mission in 1951, the Lawees settled in North America and arrived in Montreal in 1953. Their Baghdad house was eventually rented to the French government as an embassy. But after Hussein’s party took power in 1968, the rent checks stopped coming. Instead, the Iraqi regime took the money, and it still collects the rent to this day, even though Philip Kazzam says his family is still registered as the rightful owners.
So he’s suing France for over $30 million in unpaid rent and damages. At the same time, he’s trying to get his ancestral patrimony back in a case that’s being closely watched by the descendants of the nearly 1 million Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews who were forced out of Arab lands.
Philip Khazzam: It’s my dream one day to go to Baghdad, and I’ll have to wait it out till things quieten down, until this situation is resolved. But there’s nothing I’d love more than to go to Baghdad and walk the streets where my parents walked, be in the house that my mother lived in.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Monday, July 7, 2025. Welcome to North Star, the flagship news podcast of The Canadian Jewish News, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.Â
When the Lawee family came to Montreal, they continued in the automobile business for many years, and some of you might remember Barnabe Motors in St. Laurent. They also supported the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. Philip Kazzam, Ezra’s grandson, has never been to Baghdad. Actually, travel there has been out of the question, what with the first Saddam Hussein dictatorship and then the ISIS/Daesh caliphate a decade ago. In fact, Canada still has an urgent travel advisory against going to Iraq. But in truth, no one in the family wants to get the house back to live in it. That part of their family’s Iraq story is over. But he is suing France for using stolen Jewish property these last 50 years.
Philip Kazzam joins me now with the latest on his landmark case. It’s good to meet you.
Philip Khazzam: Thank you very much, Ellin.
Ellin Bessner: Your family’s saga goes to many different countries, including exile, including migration. Let’s just give our listeners a little bit of background on how you ended up in Montreal and where your family came to be in Baghdad.
Philip Khazzam: Well, I think our family history goes back, really. We are from Babylon, basically Baghdad, and our history starts back about 2,600 years. We’ve always been in Baghdad until the, I would say, the early 50s when basically everybody, pretty much everyone, had left in our family.
Ellin Bessner: Maybe talk a little bit about the conditions with which your family ended up.
Philip Khazzam: Having to leave, till the 1930s with the influence, you know, we there was the influence of Hitler. And that was, of course, very negative for the Jews in Baghdad. And I think they had a pretty peaceful life. They lived amongst Muslims and Christians, but unfortunately, things turned bad. There were pogroms, and eventually they had no choice but to consider leaving because conditions were very, very difficult.  In 1951, you had the mass exodus of the Jews, and most of them did go to Israel. Some who were fortunate to be perhaps in a better financial situation had the opportunity to go to other countries. So my grandfather and his brother and the kids moved to New York actually for a couple of years, hoping to get their papers for New York. Eventually, they gave up. They were waiting too long and decided to come to Montreal.
Ellin Bessner: Beit Lawee or the House of Lawee. How many years did it take to build? Do you know who the architect was? How did they get this idea to build this beautiful mansion?
Philip Khazzam: I believe they chose a French architect. They probably started in 1935, and it was completed in 1937. They had a nice life there. There was a country club right next to the house where they had tennis courts, and my mother used to go and walk over with her racket and go and play at the country club.
Ellin Bessner: It had beautiful formal gardens.
Philip Khazzam: Yes. I mean, they had fountains and gardens. My mother, I believe they even had a mango tree there. My mother and her father loved mango. It was just a very, very nice life. I guess ultimately my grandfather realized that he had to leave at some point. Thank G-d that he was able to have one of the people who was working with him take care of the property. He had the opportunity to reply to the tender for an embassy, the French embassy in Baghdad, and fortunately, we got it.
Ellin Bessner: So how did the idea come to you, and when did this idea start in your family that this wasn’t right?
Philip Khazzam: In 1971, when Saddam’s regime had advised the French to stop paying our family and to pay the government, we were somehow eventually notified of that. There was a cousin of mine that had written to the French government, to the Foreign Office, wanting to know what’s going on with the property. We had received money, I think, for one year, and then it just all of a sudden stopped. It’s probably at that time that he wrote to the government and never got a reply.  I would say from 1971-72 till literally 2004, there was really no movement on the part of my family. I think they realized that they did not have any chances whatsoever. Of course, there were the wars with Israel, the Six-Day War, and it just became very, very difficult to try to resolve anything with anybody.
So in 2004, my uncle Meyer approached Lucien Bouchard, who was a lawyer at that time in Montreal,
Ellin Bessner: Former premier of Quebec, yes,
Philip Khazzam: and asked him to send a letter to the French Foreign Ministry, which he did, but he did not get a reply.  So again, it was a lost opportunity, and it was the best opportunity because the U.S. had basically invaded Iraq, and we now had foreign powers that had influence in Iraq. It would have been the right time to go in and do something. Unfortunately, we had not taken that opportunity, or we had not pushed hard enough. I guess we just didn’t know what to do.
Around 2010, for some reason, it got into my head that something should be done, I should really look into this. I understood that Iraqi property was relatively expensive or there was value to it. I decided, oh, I’m going to look into this. I remember one day I decided to call a real estate office in Baghdad, a real estate company in Baghdad, actually—they’re builders. And I spoke to a gentleman who answered the phone, and I said, you know, I just would like to ask you a couple of questions about the French Embassy in Baghdad, and his reaction was quite strong. He said, is this a joke? I said, it’s no joke. I’m just interested in this, and I told him who I was. And he said, six years ago, I renovated the. I was in charge of renovating the house.
Ellin Bessner: So all these signposts along the way are giving you–somebody’s nudging you that this is the right thing for you to do, right? Do you want to say how much it’s worth now?
Philip Khazzam: I believe it’s worth 27 million. However, I think today it’s much more. There is a lack of space in Baghdad, a lack of land in Baghdad. Embassies in Baghdad are having a terrible time trying to deal with increases in rents. And also, they have nowhere to go. There’s not a lot of places to go. So it’s very important real estate right now.
Ellin Bessner: Who are you doing this for, Philip?
Philip Khazzam: The real reason, actually, that I decided to do this is, in 2020, I realized that this is not just about a property. It’s really about human rights. And that’s why I went for it. I had a father who was extremely principled to a fault, sometimes to his detriment. He always wanted to do himself the right thing, and he appreciated when people did the right thing. And I saw such an injustice, and I felt it’s just not right.
Ellin Bessner: Would you be okay if they continue using it as an embassy? There’s no talk of you getting it back as your family home, right? Or is there?
Philip Khazzam: No, at this point, our family would like to sell the property. The majority of the family is in their 70s and 80s, so I think it’s time. And of course, we are looking to get back rent for 50 years from.
Ellin Bessner: The French government in this climate where it’s not that friendly to Jews in Arabic countries. What has the reaction been that you’re aware of? Has there been support or pushback?
Philip Khazzam: This is a case of personal property that was stolen from us, a little bit like Nazi art. And if we are going to talk about the Palestinian issue, I’m only saying that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s apples and oranges. This is personal property. It’s a difficult issue, of course, which I’m not getting into, but that’s a difficult issue. There’s also an issue of unjust enrichment. The French government is paying a very, very low rent to the Iraqi government because many of the Jewish properties were left basically empty. And there are people from the government or other people that end up being in charge of that property, renting it out to people, keeping a little bit for themselves. And they don’t rent it for much because there’s no cost base to it. They got property for free.
Ellin Bessner: So our listeners will be more familiar with the reparations that, for example, Germany and other European Nazi-occupied countries paid, whether it’s artwork, for example, or other things that the occupied countries, you know, took from the Jews when they fled. And that is very familiar to many Diaspora Jews. But in terms of the Middle East and North African countries who were also expelled and lost everything, that is a less well-known story. How do you feel that your claim and your lawsuit might encourage more awareness and other people may be following suit?
Philip Khazzam: Well, that was one of the purposes of what I was doing. I felt that we had an opportunity to receive compensation for our property which might help other Jews in other Middle Eastern countries receive some sort of compensation.
A study’s being done and the results are out for two countries. Basically a study to see what were the losses by Jews in Middle Eastern countries. Egypt was the first one of total in today’s dollars, $80 billion. Iraq was the second country and that was $34 billion. I think in total it’s $200 billion, something like that for all the different 10 or 11 countries in the Middle East where the Jews had to leave. So it’s pretty significant.
I do wish to say that I have an acquaintance in Baghdad that I speak to and he’s of the belief there are many, many people in Baghdad that realize, acknowledge, accept, and are proud that Jews were a part of that society. And even though there’s only three Jews today in Baghdad, they are actually renovating and putting back into order a synagogue in Baghdad. Four or five years ago, this would never, ever, ever happen.
Ellin Bessner: There are little springs of hope in a society that’s disappeared. Lastly, I wanted to ask you about the challenges. What challenges have pursuing this case posed to you personally?
Philip Khazzam: Financially, it hasn’t been difficult because we are a large family and the majority of our family has contributed. However, time-wise it has. I run a business in Montreal and I’ve had to try and do everything together and it’s difficult. And I should also say that I’m in the nut business. I import nuts and dried fruits and I have two, one, two, three wonderful, wonderful Iraqi Muslim customers. We get along wonderfully. This is the way it should be. This is the way it started and it’s the way it should end. We should always be able to live amongst different religions, but we’re from the same countries or from the same people, really.
Ellin Bessner: Your family. So it would be Khedouri and your grandfather, Ezra, bought houses in Montreal on Cedar Avenue, side by side, right? Or built them.
Philip Khazzam: Yes, that’s correct. And they did that with their house in Baghdad in mind. In fact, I saw the bannisters at the French embassy in one of the videos from one of the French TV stations and I just couldn’t believe it. It was exactly the same bannister as my grandparents’ house!
Ellin Bessner: And the columns in the front door seem to be reminiscent of what he left behind.
Philip Khazzam: Oh, of course, absolutely. And isn’t it interesting that they built almost adjoining homes to replicate the fact that they lived together in that one house in Baghdad.
Ellin Bessner: Is there any one final thing that you want our listeners and viewers to understand about why you’re doing this?
Philip Khazzam: Baghdad needs to do something for us because the house is now frozen. It needs to be unfrozen. We are not able to sell it, rent it, we’re not able to do anything. We have no control over that house till Baghdad unfreezes the house. And it’s at least a two-year process with lawyers and very difficult. And there have been Christian homes and properties that have been unfrozen in the last few years and we hope that ours will be unfrozen because the old.
Ellin Bessner: Regime, the Ba’ath regime, when they took power, they froze it under Saddam Hussein.
Philip Khazzam: And interestingly enough, all these properties are still in the names of the owners, of the Jewish owners. These properties have not been expropriated, they’ve been frozen.
Ellin Bessner: That’s good for you.
Philip Khazzam: So France has had that opportunity, but they’ve chosen to ignore us. Why? That’s a question. I should also mention that they are the most, they are the government, they are the country with the most pull in Iraq. No one has invested more than France into Iraq. In fact, Total Energy has invested $27 billion building the institution, infrastructure for oil movements, et cetera, oil production. France very easily could resolve this and really would take perhaps a phone call. So this is something I don’t understand.
Ellin Bessner: It’s been an honour to hear your story. I really, really appreciate you giving me the time.
Philip Khazzam: Thank you very, very much. I much appreciate the opportunity.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of North Star, made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.Â
A deadline of May 15 to try to settle the case through mediation has come and gone. So Philip Khazzam waits for the French government to set a court date. He isn’t the first. Mizrahi family from Montreal whose family was expelled from Arab lands, who has tried to get a symbolic court victory.  The late Raphael Bigio sued Coca-Cola unsuccessfully in an American court for taking over his family’s ancestral lands in Cairo. Â
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany.
Our executive producer is Michael Fraiman, and the music is by Brett Higgins. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Watch as Philip Khazzam’s uncle, Mayer Lawee, showed photos and recounted his time living in the family’s Baghdad mansion, in this interview from 2019, with Sephardi Voices.
- Learn more about the 1941 Iraqi pogrom against its Jewish community, in The CJN.
- Why another Montreal whose family was forced to flee Egypt, tried for years, unsuccessfully, to sue Coca-Cola for stealing their ancestral property in Cairo, in The CJN.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Bret Higgins
Support our show
- Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)
- Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
- Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
