Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Friday that he had been treated recently for prostate cancer, and his doctors said tests showed that the early-stage disease had “disappeared” after radiation therapy.
“Thank God, I am healthy,” Mr. Netanyahu, 76, said in a post on social media.
Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged having delayed telling Israelis about his cancer diagnosis for “two months” but gave a dubious explanation for it, saying he did not want to publish his medical record “at the height of the war” with Iran. The war began on Feb. 28.
His doctors shed little light on the timetable of his treatment, describing it in only vague terms. They said that, in follow-up care after a 2024 surgery to treat enlargement of Mr. Netanyahu’s prostate, a cancerous tumor of nine-tenths of a centimeter had been discovered.
Given the choice between monitoring the spread of the disease and treating it with radiation therapy, Mr. Netanyahu chose radiation, according to one of his doctors, Dr. Aron Popovtzer, the director of the Sharett Institute of Oncology at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.
In a video released on Friday by the hospital, the doctor said that the treatment took place “two and a half months ago,” but also said that it “ended after about two and a half months.” A hospital spokeswoman did not immediately respond when asked to clarify the timetable.
A checkup after the radiation therapy, including imaging and blood tests, showed “that the disease has disappeared,” Dr. Popovtzer added. “There is no evidence of the disease.”
Dr. Popovtzer said Mr. Netanyahu would continue with “standard routine monitoring as usual.”
The disclosure came as the Israeli leader released a one-page annual medical report. Dated Monday, it noted that he has had a pacemaker since 2023 but added that a stress test and blood tests this year had come out normal. His personal physician, Dr. Zvika Berkowitz, and Prof. Alon Pikarsky, the head of Hadassah’s surgical department, said the prime minister in “excellent physical condition.”
But it was a companion one-page report about his prostate cancer that shed new light on a surgical procedure performed in December 2024.
At the time, his office said that he was to have his prostate gland “removed” after a urinary tract infection had been found to stem from benign enlargement of the prostate. Afterward, his office said only that the surgery had been successful. Israeli reports quoted his medical team saying there was “no suspicion of malignancy or cancer.”
In his last annual medical report, released in February 2025, Mr. Netanyahu’s doctors said the surgery had removed “benign prostate tissue” using a laser. It did not say the entire gland had been removed.
The report signed Monday by Dr. Popovtzer, Dr. Mark Vigoda and Dr. Shraga Gross said that an M.R.I. scan performed as part of routine follow-up for the 2024 surgery had showed a lesion “with suspicious characteristics in the prostate.” Dr. Popovtzer said in his video that the tumor was spotted “several months ago.”
The report added that further tests had “proven beyond a doubt” that there were no metastases.
The prime minister has released yearly reports about his health since at least 2010 under guidelines developed by the office’s legal counsel.
Mr. Netanyahu used the occasion of the cancer disclosure to make a not-so-subtle jab at Israeli military and national-security officials who, he contends, failed to warn him that Hamas was planning what would become the devastating attack of Oct. 7, 2023. He also said they failed to awaken him early enough to avert catastrophe on the morning of the assault.
“When I’m given information in time about a potential danger, I want to address it immediately,” he said, in his social media post about his decision to undergo cancer treatment. “This is true on the national level and also on the personal level.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed research.
David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.
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