ABSTRACT
Over the course of several decades in the mid-twentieth century, the vast majority of Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa migrated to Israel, Europe, and the Americas. Many of them left behind properties and assets that were either seized, sold at a fraction of their worth, stolen, or abandoned. Recently, the question of compensation for these properties has garnered signifi cant attention within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Problematically, the politicized and controversial nature of these claims has obscured the ways in Middle Eastern Jews themselves have understood the issue of their lost assets. This paper focuses on two organizations that offer a lens through which the broader issue of compensation can be understood. In so doing, it argues that the nature of property claims are multidimensional and cannot be reduced to the question of whether they serve Israeli state interests.
