Worst Fears Confirmed

The abduction and murder of Chabad shaliach Zvi Kogan Hy”d in the UAE has opened a slew of unanswered questions: Who was behind the murder – was it Iran, or a more localized Islamic Jihad? Why does there seem to be a gag order on all sides? And, what does this mean for Jews visiting the Gulf states or anywhere in the Middle East, and for the Chabad shluchim in every remote corner of the world, the most visible Jews of all?

IT was a shocking murder that shook the Jewish world — and then silence.

On Motzaei Shabbos last week, news broke that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, the deputy Chabad shaliach to the United Arab Emirates, hadn’t been seen since Thursday, and there was a suspicion that he’d been kidnapped.

By Sunday, the worst fears were confirmed. The Israeli-born Rabbi Kogan, 28, had been abducted and killed by three Uzbeki nationals in what Israel described as an “anti-Semitic terror incident.” The three allegedly followed Kogan from his workplace, the kosher supermarket in Dubai, and then escaped to another country afterward. Kogan’s vehicle was found an hour and a half’s distance from Dubai.

Suspicion immediately fell on the UAE’s neighbor Iran, which has a history of targeting Israelis abroad. But in the aftermath of the murder, there was almost total silence from all sides about what had happened in the country. Besides announcing the arrest of three suspects, Emirate officials weren’t talking. In a sign of the sensitive nature of Jewish and Israeli life in the Gulf, even in the post-2020 Abraham Accords era, both representatives of Chabad and Israeli officials declined to respond.