Rabbi Zvi Kogan’s death threatens Dubai’s status as oasis for Israelis

In a region overwhelmingly hostile to Israel, the UAE had seemed the lone exception. But the death of Zvi Kogan risks shattering this sense of security.

Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan was found murdered after going missing in the United Arab Emirates Sunday. Picture: LinkedIn

When the Gaza war broke out last year after Hamas’s attack, Israelis had to be even more cautious travelling in a region overwhelmingly hostile to their country. The exception, it seemed, was the United Arab Emirates, which only four years ago established diplomatic relations with Israel.

Israelis speaking Hebrew and wearing kippahs continued to frequent Dubai’s malls and tourist areas. By contrast, in Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, a policeman gunned down two Israeli tourists a day after Hamas’s October 7 attack and an Israeli businessman was assassinated months later.

The sense that the UAE was the remaining oasis of security may have been shattered by the death of the Israeli-Moldovan rabbi Zvi Kogan.

The Israeli government described it as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident” and called on Israelis to avoid non-essential travel to the UAE, saying it was concerned that the threat remained.

Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan was found murdered after going missing in the United Arab Emirates Sunday.

The UAE government has not publicly provided the full details of the murder yet, but it appears to be sharing its investigation with Israel. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has thanked them for the co-operation, which would come as a relief for Israeli security agencies more accustomed to stonewalling by their Egyptian counterparts when something goes wrong.

The UAE will be keen to wrap up the investigation quickly and plug any security gaps that allowed the unusual death to take place in a country that has built a reputation for safety.

After the three arrests, the UAE’s ministry for the interior stressed the detentions were undertaken in “in record time”.

Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati official, wrote on Twitter/X: “The UAE will remain a home of safety, an oasis of stability, a society of tolerance and coexistence and a beacon of development, pride and advancement.”

The country’s appeal for its majority expatriate population and the tourists who fuel Dubai’s economy has always been its safety, and religious tolerance, alongside income tax-free jobs. That lifestyle has been enforced by a surveillance state — and a very low tolerance for political dissent — that has earned the country its share of detractors. Its proponents will argue that in a region beset by wars, poverty and unrest the UAE cannot have one without another.

One of its biggest tests came in 2020, when the UAE signed its accord with Israel, leading to criticism across the region and from the Palestinian leadership. UAE’s government, which had been among the leading funders of aid to the Palestinians, was stung by the criticism and has not forgiven the Palestinian leaders, although it has resumed its aid for their people while maintaining ties with Israel.

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Those ties will not be affected by Kogan’s death, as Netanyahu pointed out, but Israel and the UAE will also be investigating whether Iran was behind the apparent attack. The UAE had in recent years reached a rapprochement with Tehran, in large part to spare itself from attacks by its proxy in Yemen.

Yet the presence of an Israeli embassy, tourists and synagogues in the country would make it a target for a regime that is plotting revenge after Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah and its airstrikes against Iran last month.

If Iran indeed had a hand in Kogan’s death, it would be “like an act of war” against the UAE, one western diplomat said.

The Times