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They may be worth their weight in gold when it comes to supporting Israel, but most American Jews still can't seem to get any respect from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At least that's the message he's sending by telling leaders of the Conservative and Reform movements this weekend he'll back a bill reinforcing Israeli Orthodox control over local conversions.

The bill, pushed by religious and rightist members of Netanyahu's Likud governing coalition, delegitimizes the liberal Jewish movements in Israel. But as Conservative and Reform leaders point out, doing it there is tantamount to delegitimizing them everywhere.

Netanyahu has been told as much for months, since the bill first arose in the Knesset. Furthermore, he's been warned that some Conservative and Reform American Jews who give money to Israel may rethink their largesse if the bill passes.

Still, Netanyahu told Conservative and Reform leaders in the latest meeting his "hands were tied," according to one rabbi who was there.

So while Netanyahu begged off, saying he couldn't afford to risk breaking up his ruling coalition, he opened the door to a longer-term threat: A rift between Israel and the diaspora.

As Jerome Epstein, president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said, "The meeting allowed us to express to him the real possibility for a schism in world Jewry."

What's really at stake? It's not the few hundred Israeli residents who seek non-Orthodox conversions each year.

Instead, the bill banning non-Orthodox converts would send the message that non-Orthodox Jews-by-choice are "unkosher" and do not deserve citizenship in the Jewish state. By extension, any non-Orthodox Jew falls into the same category.

So far, Netanyahu seems to believe most American Jews will not care much about the bill. Perhaps he will prove prescient. But if he's wrong, the relationship between diaspora and Israeli Jewry may suffer forever.