Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, has taken issue with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's remarks last week, that the Reform and Conservative movements want to get recognition "via the backdoor, secretly, under the pretext of a technical clause of joint administration of the Western Wall." Expressing shock at the comments, Jacobs wrote in an open letter published in Haaretz, "The Reform Movement does not clandestinely demand recognition, but we do so openly and publicly."