An Israeli rabbi in the United Arab Emirates who had been missing since Thursday has been found dead, the Israeli authorities announced early Sunday. Israeli officials said the rabbi, Zvi Kogan, had been murdered and called his death an act of terrorism, without providing any further details.
The Emirati authorities did not immediately comment on the rabbi’s death. On Saturday, the Emirati Interior Ministry said officials were investigating the disappearance.
Rabbi Kogan, a dual citizen of Israel and Moldova, worked in Abu Dhabi as part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a spiritual branch of Orthodox Judaism that conducts Jewish outreach around the world.
“With great pain we share that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Abu Dhabi, U.A.E., was murdered by terrorists after being abducted on Thursday,” Chabad said in a brief statement, adding that his body had been recovered early Sunday morning.
The Israeli government has said it possesses information indicating that the killing was an act of terrorism. Israel has not specified who might have been behind such an attack in the Arab Gulf state, although it has repeatedly accused Iran and its allies of seeking to target Israelis abroad.
More Israelis and Jews have traveled to the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich autocracy next to the Persian Gulf, since the country formally opened ties with Israel in the 2020 Abraham Accords. The small Israeli and Jewish community there now has religious centers and even kosher catering businesses, in accordance with Jewish religious law.
But relations have grown chillier in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which prompted popular outrage across the region. Emirati government statements discussing Rabbi Kogan’s disappearance referred only to his Moldovan citizenship — not his Israeli nationality.