Rabbi Kogan, Murdered In UAE, Nephew Of Rabbi Killed In 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attacks: Report

Tzvi Kogan, the rabbi who was missing since Thursday and was found dead by security services in the United Arab Emirates, happens to be the nephew of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg.

Who was murdered along with his wife in a terror attack at the Nariman Chabad House in Mumbai in 2008, Israeli news outlet Channel 12 said in a report. Israel condemned Sunday Kogan’s murder in the UAE, calling it an anti-Semitic “terrorist attack” and vowing to use all means to deal with his killers.

The Israeli-Moldovan national was living and working in the UAE as a representative of the Chabad Hasidic movement, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group known for its outreach efforts worldwide.

“This murder was carried out in the UAE. The murder of an Israeli citizen and a Chabad emissary, is an abhorrent anti-Semitic terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

“The State of Israel will use all means, and will deal with these murderers, and those who dispatched them, to the fullest extent of the law. None of them will get away,” he added, without elaborating.

Israeli officials did not provide any details about the circumstances of Kogan’s murder.

The United Arab Emirates, which normalised relations with Israel in 2020 alongside other countries including Bahrain and Morocco, has yet to confirm his death.

Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday that Israel was investigating Kogan’s disappearance in the UAE and treating it as a “terrorist incident”.

“This vile anti-Semitic attack is a reminder of the inhumanity of the enemies of the Jewish people,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement.

Herzog said the murder would not “deter us from continuing to grow flourishing communities in the UAE or anywhere”.