efforts in distributing hasbara, then he is all in favor. It also reported that personnel in foreign hasbara departments would be shifted to press departments, which is where much of the work currently done by hasbara officials properly belongs. He explained that Israel's efforts to provide hasbara abroad would focus on media communications. 2000-2009 In 2001, Shmuel Katz published a retrospective of Israeli hasbara efforts and said that hasbara "must be tackled not by occasional sudden sallies but by a separate permanent department in the government." Sharon did increase hasbara efforts, but did not create a cabinet-level ministry for that purpose. Also in 2001, the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, the diplomatic arm of the Government of Israel, was an original co-sponsor of the Hasbara Fellowships activities of Aish HaTorah. The Jewish Agency for Israel, Department for Jewish Zionist Education, operates a campaign called "Hasbara, Israeli Advocacy, Your Guide to the Middle East Conflict". In May 2007, the Hasbara Fellowships asserted that "Wikipedia is not an objective resource but rather an online encyclopedia that any one can edit. The result is a website that is in large part is controlled by 'intellectuals' who seek to rewrite the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. These authors have systematically yet subtly rewritten key passages of thousands of Wikipedia entries to portray Israel in a negative light. You have the opportunity to stop this dangerous trend! If you are interested in joining a team of Wikipedians to make sure Israel is presented fairly and accurately, please contact [our] director". A similar advocacy campaign on Wikipedia was later launched by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America in May 2008; five editors involved in the campaign were sanctioned by Wikipedia administrators, who wrote that Wikipedia's open nature "is fundamentally incompatible with the creation of a private group to surreptitiously coordinate editing". In 2002, the Israeli State Comptroller's office issued a report critical of Israel's PR efforts. "A lack of an overall strategic public relations conception and objective" and lack of coordination between the various organizations were mentioned. Funding levels are modest; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spent about US$8.6 million on these efforts in 2002, and the Government Press Office was budgeted at US$100,000. In 2008, Yarden Vatikay was appointed to coordinate Israel's domestic and foreign media policy. In 2009, Israel's foreign ministry organized volunteers to add pro-Israeli commentary on news websites. In