South Florida’s Jewish community reacts after the United Arab Emirates arrests three suspects in the murder of an Israeli rabbi.
Rabbi Zvi Kogan lived and worked for Chabad in the United Arab Emirates, building bridges between Muslims and Jews.
His murder is being felt halfway around the world, here in South Florida. Authorities in the UAE say terrorists abducted and then murdered Kogan.
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“It was a monstrous act of terror that demands swift justice,” said an Israeli official at a news conference in Dubai.
Justice did come swiftly. UAE police arrested and charged three men from Uzbekistan with the crime.
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“They tracked him down, followed him and murdered him just because he was a Jew,” said rabbi Yossi Harlig from Chabad of Kendall.
He watched Kogan’s funeral service online Monday and connected the dots between his savage murder and the worldwide surge in antisemitic incidents, such as the rioting a few nights ago in Montreal and the attacks against Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.
“I think the whole world has to stand up to antisemitism because if you look in history, first they always started with the Jews and later they go to everyone else, so this is not just an attack on Jewish people, it’s an attack against the Western World,” Harlig said.
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The rabbi said the attack on Kogan had a ripple effect throughout the entire Jewish community.
“You know, they look at us that we’re all the same, our enemies," Harlig said. "I was walking on Killian and someone said, 'go back to the gas chambers,' and I’m thinking to myself, I’m not in Israel, I’m not fighting the war that you’re upset about, why are you screaming that at me? So we recognize that the world looks at us like we’re one family."
Rabbi Kogan’s widow is an American citizen. The White House released a statement Monday saying Kogan’s murder was “a horrific crime against all those who stand for peace, tolerance, and coexistence.”
Rabbi Harlig said the best way to fight back is to simply do more acts of kindness every single day.
