A Moldovan-Israeli rabbi, Zvi Kogan, emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the United Arab Emirates, was found murdered on Sunday November 24. He had been missing since Thursday. Israeli authorities described his death as a terrorist act, without providing further details. The Mossad and the Abu Dhabi authorities announced that they had opened an investigation into the subject. On Sunday, the UAE government announced the arrest of three suspects in connection with the murder. In Israel, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry called the killing a“criminal anti-Semitic terrorist attack”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the State of Israel “would do justice” to those responsible.
Rabbi Kogan had disappeared in Dubai and his body was found in Al-Ain, a town near the border with Oman, about 150 kilometers from Abu Dhabi. According to the Israeli site Ynetthe authorities suspect the involvement of Uzbek citizens recruited by Iran in this assassination.
For its part, the Iranian embassy in the United Arab Emirates declared “categorically reject allegations involving Iran” in this murder. In 2020, Iran kidnapped Iranian-German dissident Jamshid Sharmahd from the United Arab Emirates and forcibly returned him to Iran. The man was executed on October 28 in Tehran.
This murder comes against a backdrop of increased tensions between Israel and Iran, marked by exchanges of direct military strikes during the year, against a backdrop of war in Gaza. On the night of 1is on October 2, after an Iranian attack on Israel, the Israeli air force carried out strikes on military installations in Iran, claiming to have targeted “missile manufacturing sites” and “air defense systems” intended to limit Israeli operations in this country. Tehran has since threatened to retaliate “at the appropriate time”.
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Aged 28, Zvi Kogan settled in the Emirates after the normalization of relations between Israel and this country in 2020, as part of the Abraham Accords, signed under the aegis of American President Donald Trump. A former soldier in the Guivati Brigade of the Israeli Defense Forces according to the Israeli channel Kan 11, Zvi Kogan worked alongside Chief Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Duchman to promote the development of Jewish life in the Emirates. Among his accomplishments are opening the first Jewish education center in the country and improving access to kosher food.
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