Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, who had a malignant tumor removed from Tel Hashomer Hospital this week and can return to work after a short period of rest, his doctors said today. They described his recovery as “surprisingly rapid.”
Dayan was informed on Thursday that the tumor was cancerous but had not spread. His physician, Dr. Boleslaw Goldmann, made his condition public in a television interview Thursday night and indicated that prospects for a full recovery were very good.
In a bedside interview published in Yediot Achronot today, Dayan said that had the prognosis been otherwise he would have resigned from the government immediately. “A public servant in my position must be in full physicial condition. If he is incapable in any way he must resign. That’s what I told Premier Begin,” he said, adding “and so I shall do,” had he felt he could not carry on.
Dayan said “I demanded that the doctors tell the whole truth about my physical condition” not only because the public had the right to know but because the reputation of the hospital would have been compromised otherwise.
Dayan’s case was said to be the first in Israel where the serious illness of a public figure in high office was immediately disclosed. The late Premier Golda Meir was under treatment for Hodgkins Disease, a form of cancer, for 15 years unknown to the public. (By Gil Sedan)
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