A Beit Shemesh family shattered by a recent missile strike that killed a father and grandmother, wounded several relatives, and destroyed their home received $50,000 in aid from evangelical leader Mike Evans after he visited them at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Evans met Pnina Cohen, who was injured in the strike that killed her husband, Yossi Cohen, and his mother, Bruria. Several of the couple’s children were also hurt in the attack, which left the family grieving, displaced, and facing a long recovery.
According to the family and people involved in the visit, Evans first arrived at the strike scene shortly after the missile hit. He later asked to visit hospitals to meet some of the wounded and hear directly what families were going through. That request brought him to Hadassah Hospital, where he met Cohen and listened as she described what the attack had done to her family.
Cohen, the mother of four children, said the family home had been destroyed. One of her sons, a three-year-old boy, underwent surgery on his legs and was recovering with metal plates and casts. Her 13-year-old son, Noam, was supposed to celebrate his bar mitzvah that day. Instead, the family found itself preparing for a funeral.
$50,000 in financial assistance
Evans later attended Yossi Cohen’s funeral and returned several days afterward to visit the family again. During that visit, he told Cohen he would provide $50,000 in financial assistance and offered the family temporary housing in apartments at the Friends of Zion complex in central Jerusalem.
The help arrived as families across Israel continued to absorb the human cost of the missile attacks, from deaths and injuries to damaged homes and sudden displacement.
Shimrit, Cohen’s sister-in-law, who also said she lost family members and her home in the strike, thanked Evans for the support. “You came to us like an angel in a dream,” she told him.
Evans, an American evangelical figure known for his pro-Israel advocacy, had spent several days visiting missile impact sites, hospitals, and communities affected by the attacks. For the Cohen family, one of those visits ended with a badly needed lifeline at one of the hardest moments of their lives.