The military on Thursday released its full investigation into the false reporting of the number of ultra-Orthodox recruits in its ranks, admitting the discrepancies between the numbers it published and the true totals were the result of a "severe systemic failure" on the part of the officers responsible for tallying the figures as well as general disorder in the IDF's databases.
Several senior officers, including Personnel Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Moti Almoz were reprimanded for their role in the fiasco.
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The IDF found itself in hot water after Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported in December that it had "doubled or even tripled" the number of ultra-Orthodox men drafted over the past several years – a period during which the army said haredi draft figures had surged.
The issue of mandatory military service for the ultra-Orthodox sector has dogged Israeli politics for years. Many in the haredi community believe they should receive a blanket exemption from military conscription, which they see as secondary to Torah study, but secular Israelis oppose being expected to shoulder the burden without any contribution by a substantial sector of the population.
The investigation, headed by former GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Roni Numa, found that not only had the IDF never reached its enlistment targets for the ultra-Orthodox sector, as set by the government from 2014 to 2018, but the number of haredi recruits also did not increase at all during the period in question.
"The investigative committee identified a severe systemic, professional and command failure," Numa's report said, stressing that the IDF "did not deliberately falsify haredi enlistment figures," rather experienced "serious systematic failures" in the way numbers were tallied.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who received the report along with Defense Minister Naftali Bennett earlier this week, called the controversy "severe."
Bennett noted that "no system is without errors. The IDF is not immune to mistakes but the IDF knows how to fix its mistakes. We are not afraid to admit mistakes, and we will correct them."
