Time never stops, but the clock does, especially if you are a Cabinet minister in Netanyahu’s government.
The Prime Minister surprised everyone at Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting by placing a stop watch in the center of the table and setting it for three minutes every time a minister began to talk.
Under the pressure of the tick-tock, each minister had to finish or be cut off after the watch counted back to zero. Just to make sure the ministers would not be surprised when time ran out, the Cabinet secretary placed a screens on the walls of the room with a display of the clock ticking off the seconds.
The Cabinet meeting was a rarity in length, lasting less than an hour.
Perhaps Netanyahu was rushed because he had to arrive at the funeral for the late president Yitzchak Navon and later in the day at the airport for his flight to Washington.
Or perhaps he simply found an efficient way to cut the gab from Cabinet ministers who like to hear themselves speak.
The funny part of the story is that Prime Minister Netanyahu is a notorious late-comer. Likud meetings almost always start an hour later than scheduled, and he is chronically late for meetings.
However, he managed to catch his plane to the United States last night.