Soldiers in the Neztah Yehuda Battalion complete the final stages of a 40-kilometer journey during the night on Feb. 16, 2010. Other military practices are being debated by a group of rabbis in Israel. Photo: Abir Sultan/Flash90.

JNS.org – Senior Israeli military officials involved with the army’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) recruitment program denied on Wednesday that data was falsified to make it appear that recruitment quotas had been met, Ynet reported.

The statement came in response to a report by Israel’s Kan radio that the Israeli Defense Forces has been inflating the number of haredi recruits for years in an effort to hide the fact that it was not meeting its quota requirements. The report claimed that in 2017, for example, the number of haredi recruits according to the army was 3,070, when in true figure was 1,300.

However, according to Ynet, the military officials said the differences were due to changes in the army’s definition of who qualified as haredi.

The army said in a statement: “The IDF recently discovered a mistake when it comes to our system of counting the ultra-Orthodox soldiers. Once we became aware of the mistake, we learned our lesson when it comes to setting a standard for counting the ultra-Orthodox recruits.”