New York Times: The French embassy in Baghdad is using a lavish palace for which it hasn’t paid rent in decades.
New York Times: The French embassy in Baghdad is using a lavish palace for which it hasn’t paid rent in decades.
1-25-2026
Baghdad-Mail
The New York Times attacked the French embassy in Baghdad, attributing the reason to the fact that its headquarters was originally a luxurious palace belonging to an Iraqi Jewish immigrant family.
The newspaper published these details in an article translated by the Mail, titled “The dark history of the French embassy in Iraq is being put on trial in Paris.”
The newspaper noted that “Paris stopped paying rent a long time ago after Iraqi Jews were stripped of their property.”
She explained, “The family filed a lawsuit in Paris demanding that the French government pay $22 million in compensation,” arguing that “France made a cheaper deal offered by the Iraqi government, which confiscated the house under the law.”
The newspaper explained that “the house belongs to Ezra and Khaddouri Levi, brothers, who built it in 1935 on the banks of the Tigris River in Abu Nuwas Street, and France leased it in 1965.”
The newspaper quotes Meyer Levi, 86, the son of Ezra Levi and one of the last surviving members of the family who lived in the house, as saying, “To save the house, my father rented it to the French, and he was upset because he had built it from scratch and it was taken away.”
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