Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 24, 2025

France’s Questionable Occupation of Iraqi Land

An embassy in Baghdad on stolen Jewish property.

The French government is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with descendants of the Lawee family, Baghdad Jews whose former home is now the location of France’s embassy to Iraq. The disposition of this particular property is hardly the Middle East’s most pressing issue, and the legal details are murky. But given Paris’s intense concern over real-estate transactions in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and its attention to any possibility that Jews might be occupying land or housing that once belonged to Palestinians, its behavior in this matter is noteworthy. Alexander Kippen writes:

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