Woman wounded in Beit Shemesh attack tells Herzog she’s burying husband, mother-in-law on day of son’s bar mitzvah

Visiting Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, President Isaac Herzog meets with Beit Shemesh resident Penina Cohen, who was wounded and lost her husband and mother-in-law in yesterday’s Iranian missile attack on the city, which killed nine civilians and destroyed a synagogue in a residential area.

Cohen’s husband, Yossi Cohen, and her mother-in-law, Bruria Gloria Cohen, were both killed in the attack.

Cohen tells Herzog that she and her family were in the synagogue when the siren went off and immediately ran to a bomb shelter: “We were sitting there and suddenly it happened. My young son was beside me and was also injured… I was right beneath the hole that was torn open, and I have no explanation for how we were not more seriously hurt. We experienced a great miracle,” she says.

“My children and I survived, but sadly, my husband and my mother-in-law, who was sitting next to me, were murdered,” she says, adding that her son was meant to celebrate his bar mitzvah today. “Instead, we are burying my husband and mother-in-law. And despite all the pain, I feel that we were under great protection,” she says.