The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published a brief statement on Sunday reporting that the prime minister is in normal health and maintains a healthy lifestyle with a proper diet.
The cardiac incident that Netanyahu suffered in July will be discussed separately, the statement said. The prime minister was hospitalized for heart issues and had a pacemaker implanted.
The statement from his office Sunday said that since that operation, “there has been no evidence of arrhythmias or other events” and that “the pacemaker implanted in his body is working properly.”
“He is not dependent on the pacemaker,” the statement reported, “and no abnormal events have been recorded since his previous examination.”
A history of prime ministers keeping illness under wraps
Netanyahu’s health was a focus of attention over the summer following his cardiac incident, which came at the height of protests over the government’s proposed judicial reforms.
Israel has a history of prime ministers covering up medical problems, such as Golda Meir, who received treatment for lymphoma in the middle of the night to avoid revealing the illness to the public, and Yitzhak Rabin, who suffered a nervous breakdown in the run-up to the Six Day War and only spoke openly about the incident once he was prime minister several decades later.
