A Mother’s Dread and a Soldier’s Last Gift: The Tragic Loss of Amit Cohen
Amit Cohen's mother has a gut feeling yesterday that something was wrong. Sadly, she was right. Amit fell, fighting for Israel, in the Gaza Strip.
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Maya Cohen’s gut was screaming something was wrong long before the IDF officers knocked on her door. Her son, Sgt. Amit Cohen, 19, a Golani Brigade soldier, was killed Monday in a devastating operational accident in Khan Younis, Gaza, and the news shattered her world. “I kept telling myself, ‘It’s not my son, it’s nothing,’” Maya told *N12* in a heart-wrenching interview, her voice heavy with grief. “But deep down, I felt it, something wasn’t right.”
Hours before the dreaded knock, Maya caught wind of an incident in Amit’s unit. A soldier on leave mentioned trouble, and her husband urged her to check. She called the company commander, again, no answer. Texted him on WhatsApp, but there was silence. The platoon leader and sergeant were unreachable too. “I even talked to the commander’s mom, who said there was an event but no details,” Maya said. Plagued by “uncontrollable anxieties” and nightmares of that fateful knock, she was already on edge when the officers arrived that night.
Amit was all heart, a Scout counselor who lived for Golani. “I moved mountains to get him there because it meant everything to him,” Maya said, her regret raw. “I begged him, ‘Amit, enough. You’ve done your part.’ But he’d say, ‘Mom, if everyone thought like that, October 7 would hit Holon. You don’t get how important this is.’” His girlfriend, Liya Ben Baruch, got a bouquet and a note from him just hours before, celebrating her new role as a commander. “We talked at two-something, right before it happened,” she sobbed. “He was the kindest, most loving soul, and he wouldn’t leave his unit, no matter the danger.”
Amit’s little sister, Gaia, was in Rhodes when her parents called. “Dad said, ‘Answer, it’s urgent,’ but I brushed it off,” she said, tears streaming. “My brother was a hero, gave everything. He wanted to marry Liya, build a family. He was 19—he hadn’t even started living.” Her voice broke with fury: “Families are destroyed, and no one cares.”
Amit and Sgt. Danilo Mokanu, killed in May in a Khan Younis building collapse, were high school buddies at ORT Holon, their yearbook photos side by side. Maya attended Danilo’s funeral while Amit was stuck in Gaza. “I sent him a picture, said we were honoring Danilo,” she recalled. “Amit was so proud, said, ‘What a man he was.’”
The accident struck around 4:00 p.m. Monday when a combat device exploded in a battalion vehicle, killing Amit and severely wounding an officer. The IDF is still probing what went wrong. Amit was laid to rest Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. in Holon’s military cemetery, leaving behind his parents, a brother, and a sister.
Liya clung to a final memory: Amit refused to write a “just in case” letter two weeks ago. “He got mad when I asked,” she said. “‘Why would I write that? It’s like believing something bad will happen.’ He wouldn’t do it.” His teacher, Ronen, remembered Amit’s “sea-blue eyes, full of endless giving” and a smile that lit up his supportive family. Even as a baby, Amit charmed everyone in a famous diaper ad, his name, meaning “friend”, fitting a boy you could always lean on.
Maya, still reeling, thought back to Danilo’s shattered mother. “I saw her and wondered, ‘How do you survive this? You can’t.’ And now it’s me. I can’t believe it’s real.”