He founded the Shanghai Zionist Association in 1903 and its official newspaper, Israel's Messenger, one of China's oldest and most sophisticated Jewish periodicals.

Nissim Elias Benjamin Ezra was a Baghdadi Jew[2] born in Lahore, British India (now Pakistan),[3] and settled in Shanghai, China.

Ezra held a pessimistic view of the West, at a time when Europe was dominated by the regimes in Germany and Russia, which were responsible for widespread human rights abuses.

[3] On 15 September 1933, Ezra wrote a letter to Mamoru Shigemitsu and proposed to resettle the European Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany in Manchukuo.

Cohen opposed his plan, noting that it would be inappropriate to settle the refugees in Japanese-occupied Manchukuo, and the potential instability that might result from the conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union in Manchuria.