Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, a senior member of the Emirati Federal National Council and chairman of its committee on defense, interior and foreign affairs, visited the shive in Israel for Zvi Kogan, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi who was murdered in the United Arab Emirates.
The American Jewish Committee thanked Al Nuaimi for attending the shiva.
“The United Arab Emirates will never allow extremists to divide us,” the Emirati official said, per the AJC. “Today, more than ever, our country is committed to openness and peace.”
JNS sought comment from the Emirati embassies in Tel Aviv and Washington, as well as from the Israeli embassy in the United Arab Emirates.
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, shared a statement of the Emirati official on social media in which he said that “no person with a human feeling and common sense will agree with the barbarian terrorist attack that Hamas committed on Oct. 7. No one.”
Cotler-Wunsh added that the Iranian regime wants to kill the sort of hope raised by Al Nuaimi’s statement. “With action and courage, hope will prevail,” she wrote.
Aryeh Lightstone, a former senior adviser to David Friedman, who was U.S. ambassador to Israel, wrote that “there is so much darkness and hatred in this world.”
“The leadership of the UAE continues to shine light against that darkness,” Lightstone stated. “Rav Zvi Kogan was also a ray of light illuminating the darkness. In his memory, we should all take it upon ourselves to bring more light into this world.”
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, welcomed Al Nuaimi’s visit to Israel but wrote that “it’s no substitute for a joint Emirati-U.S.-Israeli probe into the Khamenei regime’s role in the murder.”
“If the hitmen acted on behalf of the regime or its proxies, the Iranian ambassador to the UAE must be expelled, and the consequences must be severe,” he wrote.
Kogan, 28, was a Chabad emissary in Abu Dhabi and ran a kosher supermarket in Dubai, where he lived.
After he went missing on Nov. 21, security forces found his body on Nov. 24. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry stated that the murder was “a heinous act of antisemitic terrorism.”
Earlier in the week, Emirati officials identified three suspects—ages 33, 28 and 28—all Uzbek nationals who allegedly acted on orders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
