Murder of Chabad ambassador in UAE shows ongoing anti-Semitic crisis

Murder of Chabad emissary Rabbi Zvi Kogan The incident in the United Arab Emirates represents the culmination of fears that have arisen frequently over the years about Jews abroad being targeted by a variety of enemies.

According to news dated November 24, authorities identified Kogan’s body. “The Israeli mission in Abu Dhabi has been in contact with the family since the beginning of the incident and continues to support them during this difficult period,” the statement said. “His family in Israel was also informed.”

Abraham Accords

This event will have many effects. First, it is already affecting the Gulf. Israel, UAEand Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords in 2020. Four years have passed since the first significant flights began.

There were great hopes then and relations developed rapidly. They have grown in many ways, from tourism to trade, as well as the Jewish community in the Gulf. After many years in which the community lay low, growth was so rapid that many wondered if it was too good to be true. In fact, the overall profile of the Jewish community in 2020-2021 was a honeymoon period.

The conflict in Gaza in May 2021 and its aftermath October 7 attacks and other tensions in the region meant that it felt like the happy times of 2020-2021 had been put on hold, at least temporarily.

ANTISEMITISM on display at Britain’s Free Palestine rally. (credit: CST)

There has been a lot of talk over the last four years about extending the Accords to Saudi Arabia. The election of Donald Trump this month is expected to further open the sails of a possible agreement. But Israel’s enemies have shown that they are ready to burn the region to prevent normalization.

Iran, Hamas and other countries opposed the Abraham Accords. For example, Türkiye threatened to sever relations with the UAE in 2020 if the UAE normalizes relations with Israel. Today, Ankara is one of the most hostile countries to Israel in the world. Hamas was hosted in Doha, now it can be hosted in Ankara. Doha is also hostile to Israel and has not joined the Accords.

Opposition to the Abraham Accords does not always lead to attacks against Jews, but following the October 7 attack there was an increase in attacks against Jews around the world. These attacks are mostly fueled by Iran, Hamas and their affiliated groups.

While some groups appear progressive in the West, their general milieu is linked to Hamas and Iran. For example, a recent anti-Israel protest in Canada featured footage of a woman giving a Nazi salute and calling for a “final solution.” Additionally, in October, a Jewish man attending a synagogue in Chicago was shot in a hate crime.

Global effort against antisemitism

What we have understood since October 7 is that there is a global effort to fan the flames of antisemitism. This is linked to a multitude of sources and influences. There are online social media personalities who have followers and use the Gaza war to spread hatred against Jews. There are voices associated with Qatar and Moscow. Student activists on college campuses across the West are tearing down posters of the hostages.

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Much of this global attack on Jews was seen during the brief 10-day conflict with Hamas in 2021. During this war, which was likely a rehearsal for the October 7 attack, mobs were unleashed in the West to harass Jews and threaten to rape Jewish women.

The UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has quietly withdrawn charges against two men who joined a convoy of cars driving around Blackburn in northern England, shouting anti-Semitic slogans and threatening to rape women.

Over the last few years, Jews have realized that Jews are the only group that does not receive protection when it comes to the West’s enforcement of “hate crimes.” In many cases, society needs to work harder to ensure basic justice when Jews are targeted. Jews are more likely to be targeted in violent hate crimes than other minority groups in most Western countries.

Jews in the Middle East have always felt threatened in the last decade. The prevalence of antisemitism is evident in most countries in the region. In many countries, whenever an “enemy” or “conspiracy” is described, it is said that the Jews are behind it.

For example, former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was recorded as saying that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would mean “Qatar will bring American Jews to Egypt” and hinted at a conspiracy that “Jews” were behind the woman in Ethiopia’s Nile valley.

During the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, some posters depicted him with the Star of David, implying that he was either a secret Jew or a “Zionist”.

Sometimes the intertwined anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are more subtle. When the Kurdistan region asked for a referendum on independence in 2017, both Iran and Türkiye spread rumors that Kurdistan would become a second Israel.

The peace made between Egypt in the 1980s and Jordan in the 1990s brought tolerance neither to Israel nor to the Jews in the region. Anyone who has traveled in the region has encountered widespread anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli views that are intertwined.

In some cases, Western media have tried to cover this up, for example by translating slurs against “Jews” or “Jew” as against Israel. This is the method used to cover up the street-level populist Jew-hatred that has developed over decades in the Middle East and to claim that many people just don’t like “Israelis” or “Zionists”.

The truth is that many people in the region were raised to hate Jews. To them, Israel is “Jewish,” and killing or hating Jews is often synonymous with killing Israelis. This is why many anti-Israel social media accounts in the region refer to the killing of Israelis throughout Israel as “settlers.”

The aim is to “otherize” all Israelis. It does not matter whether Israelis live in Tel Aviv or Efrat, to most anti-Israel voices they are “settlers” and “Jews” and attacking or killing them is justified as “resistance.”

After the Abraham Accords, many of us who believed in peace wanted to hope that this trend might change. If countries in the region see that this is not a profitable trend for their interests, it may be possible for the authorities in the region to change their decision to educate people about Israel and anti-Semitism.

Many regimes have used antisemitism and “anti-Zionism” to stay in power. Therefore, if they see the peace fruits of the Agreements, perhaps they will be inclined to see coexistence as in their own interests.

While the fight for the Accords was off to a great start in the UAE and Bahrain, and to some extent in Morocco, the enemies of the Accords were powerful lobbies such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In early 2021, when the Biden administration came to power, far-right media in Turkey published an article detailing all the Jews in the administration, as if encouraging some kind of Elders of Zion wrapped in Turkish-Islamism to take over American politics. conspiracies.

destination in UAE

This brings us back to the apparent targeting and killing of Kogan in the UAE. The initial statement of the authorities mentioned a “missing Moldovan citizen”. The anxiety of saying Kogan is Israeli or a rabbi is evident in these initial reactions.

Now many questions will be raised, such as how he was killed, whether the perpetrators escaped, and if so, how. What’s clear is that this murder will probably change a lot of things. This is one of many threats to Jews in the region, as well as Iranian-backed conspiracies.

These conspiracies cover the region from Azerbaijan to Türkiye, Greece and Cyprus. Additionally, in 2023, an Israeli-Russian researcher named Elizabeth Tsurkov was kidnapped in Iraq. This situation should have rung alarm bells at that time.

His abductions after 7 October were underreported due to the intensity of the attacks on 7 October and the smuggling of 250 people to Gaza; 101 of them are still held there.

Abraham Accords

Global effort against antisemitism

destination in UAE

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