Visiting Reform leaders cancel Netanyahu meeting amid Western Wall uproar

26 June 2017, 5:39 pm

Edit

Visiting leaders of the US Reform Movement cancel Thursday’s meeting with Netanyahu after his cabinet shelved the hard-won deal for a pluralistic prayer pavilion at the Western Wall.

“We cannot go about our scheduled meetings as if nothing has happened,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, says in a statement. “The annulment of the Kotel [Western Wall] resolution and the passing of the conversion law have caused an acute crisis between the Israeli government and diaspora Jewry.”

“The decision cannot be seen as anything other than a betrayal, and I see no point to a meeting at this time. We will make our arguments in the Supreme Court.”