Israel said Sunday that the body of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found. The U.A.E.’s Interior Ministry later said authorities arrested three perpetrators involved in the killing of Zvi Kogan.
The statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel “will act with all means to seek justice with the criminals responsible for his death.” Israeli authorities did not say how they determined the death of Kogan was a “heinous antisemitic terror incident” and offered no additional details.
Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher grocery store in Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
The agreement has held through more than a year of soaring regional tensions unleashed by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel. But Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the Hezbollah militant group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the the U.A.E.
Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also been threatening to retaliate against Israel after a wave of airstrikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack.
The Emirati government did not respond to a request for comment. However, senior Emirati diplomat Anwer Gargash wrote on the social platform X in Arabic on Sunday that “the U.A.E. will remain a home of safety, an oasis of stability, a society of tolerance and coexistence and a beacon of development, pride and advancement.”
Early on Sunday, the U.A.E.’s state-run WAM news agency acknowledged Kogan’s disappearance but pointedly did not acknowledge he held Israeli citizenship, referring to him only as being Moldovan. The Emirati Interior Ministry described Kogan as being “missing and out of contact.”
“Specialized authorities immediately began search and investigation operations upon receiving the report,” the Interior Ministry said.
The ministry later said that three “perpetrators” had been arrested “in record time” without giving additional details.
Netanyahu told a regular cabinet meeting later Sunday that he was “deeply shocked” by Kogan’s disappearance and death. He said he appreciated the co-operation of the U.A.E. in the investigation and that ties between the two countries would continue to be strengthened.
Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the alleged killing and thanked Emirati authorities for “their swift action.” He said he trusts they “will work tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Israel also again warned against all non-essential travel to the Emirates after Kogan’s killing.
“There is concern that there is still a threat against Israelis and Jews in the area,” a government warning issued Sunday said.
Burgeoning Jewish community in U.A.E.
Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighbourhood in New York City. It said he was last seen in Dubai. The U.A.E. has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.
The Rimon Market, a kosher grocery store that Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was shut Sunday. As the wars have roiled the region, the store has been the target of online protests by supporters of the Palestinians. Mezuzahs — religious pieces of parchment — on the front and back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press journalist stopped by on Sunday.
Kogan’s wife, Rivky, is a U.S. citizen who lived with him in the U.A.E. She is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The U.A.E. is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Local Jewish officials in the U.A.E. declined to comment.