Netanyahu hospitalized from apparent heat injury

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel lost consciousness, collapsed, and went to hospital yesterday after an apparent heat injury.

Netanyahu suffers from the heat

Reportage comes from Just the News and The Jerusalem Post.

Apparently Prime Minister Netanyahu spent the day with his wife near his home in Caesaria Philippi in the north country. Specifically he spent several hours on a nearby shore of the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Khennerith. He admitted later, as did his office, that he let himself dehydrate by spending long hours under a hot sun. Emergency responders took him to Sheba Medical Center, near Tel Aviv, where he was to remain overnight for testing.

Commenting on the incident afterward, Netanyahu admitted to being outside, hatless and not having drunk enough water. He advised his people that, during the “severe heatwave,” they shouldn’t make the same mistake he made. The prime minister suggested the people “spend less time in the sun” and “drink more water.”

Netanyahu has gone to hospital before, last October, after fainting during Yom Kippur prayers in Jerusalem.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest-serving Prime Minister in the history of the modern State of Israel, and in fact is on his second non-consecutive period of service. His return to power seemed to signal an effort by Israel to make itself a civilizational state.

His rival wishes him well

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, who had been Prime Minister, wished Netanyahu well.

Long-time readers might remember Yair Lapid for his heartfelt essay, Être Israélien (“What does it mean to be an Israeli?”), published in the now-defunct French site Terre promise (“The Promised Land”). CNAV translated it into English. Ironically, Lapid, in that essay, half-suggested Israel ought to attack Gaza to retaliate for repeated terrorist attacks from that quarter. Three years after CNAV published the essay, Israel did just that.

Israel does have a dry climate, with rain coming only in the wintertime – or more frequently in Jerusalem. At last report the Sea of Galilee was at two-thirds of its highest permitted level. That level has been declining at about two and three quarters inches per week.