Israel Faces Uproar Abroad as Netanyahu Yields to Ultra-Orthodox Jews<br />Charles Bronfman, the Canadian-American billionaire and a major Jewish philanthropist, sent a letter to the Israeli prime minister taking him to task and noting<br />that "to my knowledge, no other country in the world denies any Jew based on denomination." And the board of governors of the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that works to connect Israel with Jews around the world and that is led by the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, flatly canceled a gala dinner with Mr. Netanyahu.<br />that Prime Minister, you must know that the wholeness of the people is more important than the wholeness of the coalition,<br />An editorial published by an ultra-Orthodox news site described Reform Judaism as "perhaps a kind of religion, but a foreign religion like Christianity and Islam." Yariv Levin, the tourism minister, from Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party, told a religious radio station<br />that threats to cut contributions to Israel showed "a large degree of chutzpah." "Those donors will not determine how the state looks," Mr. Levin was quoted as saying.<br />Minutes before the votes on the conversion bill and the suspension of the Kotel plan, Mr. Sharansky had accompanied Avinoam Bar-Yosef, the Israeli president of the Jewish People Policy Institute,<br />and its American chairmen, Dennis B. Ross and Stuart E. Eizenstat, as they presented the research group’s annual assessment to Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet.
