The "Whistle" fact-checking project from "Globes" newspaper published a sweeping correction in the past 24 hours to the economic analysis it published last May regarding the price tag of the absence of military service in the Haredi sector.
The move came after a detailed appeal submitted by MK Yitzhak Pindaros revealed serious methodological flaws in the original calculations.
Initially, the website backed up claims made by opposition leader Yair Lapid that all working households in Israel bear a monthly burden of approximately 1,700 shekels due to non-conscription.
That initial review estimated the amount at approximately 1,420 shekels and gave the argument a score of "mostly correct." However, a request from a member of Knesset led to an internal peer review that ended with a public admission of the failures and a dramatic reduction in the statistical gaps.
A re-examination of the data pointed to two broad analytical errors. The first focused on the base amount on which the researchers relied: While the original study by the Israel Democracy Institute used a figure of approximately 14.9 billion shekels - an amount that also included the lateral effects of failure to integrate into the labor market - it was clarified to the institute's researchers that the direct cost of discharge from military service is only 3.8 billion shekels. Of this, 1.4 billion is associated with the exemption of women, 1.9 billion with the non-conscription of men, and about half a billion with the lack of a reserve envelope.
The second flaw concerned the method of distributing the burden across the population. Instead of distributing the amount broadly, the original study chose to focus the calculation on only the top four deciles among the non-Haredi Jewish population. In the revised calculation, the cost was distributed across all employed households in the economy, which numbered about 2.2 million households.
The gap between the results is obvious: instead of the high amounts presented in the past, the real monthly cost for a working household is only 144 shekels.
Following the corrected data, the website staff changed the score given to the claim from "true" to "false," and signed the publication with an official apology to readers along with words of thanks to MK Pindaros for exposing the error.
