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PM Ariel Sharon looks at camels during a tour of the Israeli-Egyptian border. (AP - file)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners December 22, 2005 |
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Israel's most tightly guarded secret has nothing to do with its military might. It is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's weight.
After Sharon suffered a minor stroke Sunday reporters have been scrambling to find out how much the tubby leader weighs.
Hospital staff laughed when they were asked for the secret number, saying they don't have access to his medical file. And even journalists with insider information from the Shin Bet security service - responsible for Sharon's security detail - could not obtain the figure.
Newspapers and radio talk shows focused on Sharon's eating habits - which apparently consist of a lot of fatty meats and junk food - and even hired pollsters to find out what Israelis think of Sharon's weight problem. One nutritionist said that Sharon, famous for his "disengagement" plan that pulled Israel out of Gaza, will now have to disengage from junk food.
"The heyday of gluttony is over. Sharon is starting a diet," read a headline in the Yediot Ahronot daily. But Sharon's aides denied the prime minister had committed to cutting back, saying old habits are hard to break.
According to Yediot, Sharon regularly orders shwarma - greasy turkey or lamb in pita bread - and falafel - deep fried chickpea balls - to his office. Sharon's armored convoy also regularly stops at a popular Jerusalem humus restaurant to grab takeaway for Sharon and his aides, Yediot reported.
Over dinner one evening at Sharon's Negev farm, The Jerusalem Post reports, former New York Mayor Ed Koch recalls telling Sharon, "I love you, and I worry you're going to die. You're fat and you eat too much." Sharon, he said, retorted: "I hardly eat." But, Koch went on, "when he came to visit me [as New York mayor] at Gracie Mansion, he ate off my plate! I've never seen anything like it. Somebody better take control."
Koch admits he's had weight problems his whole life. "I was a fat little boy," he said, "but I was never as fat as Sharon."
Koch, who had a stroke in 1987, said Sharon should regard this week's mild stroke as a warning. The Jerusalem Post quoted him as advising: "He needs to get a first-rate chef to make him first-rate food," he said, adding: "Israeli food is terrible. He needs non-calorific food that he'd like. It can be done, and it must be. His life is at stake... And when he goes to official dinners, the chef needs to give his guard a care package for him to eat there."
Sharon often jokes about his weight, even jesting that the Shin Bet has yet to find an armored vest large enough to cover his belly. Eli Yatzpan, a popular Israeli comedian, often mimics the prime minister by significantly padding his shirt, biting off entire loaves of bread and drinking orange juice out of huge jugs. Last weekend, an actor on the comedy show "Wonderful Country" depicted an enormous Sharon eating whipped cream off the bald head of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.
"It could really be that the prime minister doesn't know how much he weighs...because fat people don't like to know how much they weigh," said Amnon Dankner, editor of the Maariv daily, which has also invested great, but so far unsuccessful, efforts into uncovering the coveted information.
"If fat people don't like to know how much they weigh, they certainly don't want to read about it in the newspaper. You want Arik to find out how much he weighs by reading about it in Maariv?" Dankner said, calling Sharon by his nickname.
Having failed to uncover Sharon's weight, Maariv instead hired a polling service and found that 80 percent of the 498 surveyed wanted Sharon to lose weight, many of them saying because he is a role model. No margin of error was provided.
The Jerusalem Post's David Horovitz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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