Israel said Sunday that the body of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found after he was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident”.
The UAE’s Interior Ministry later said authorities arrested three suspects 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 killing of Kogan was a terror attack and offered no additional details.
Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of 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’ October 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 UAE.