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In practice, most Israelis are secular, gay-friendly and, even with the country’s mandatory military service, have little interest in firearms as recreation. Israeli gun laws are in fact quite stiff and most look at America’s obsession with weapons incredulously.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Morad’s “kinder-guardian” program segment, in which a string of gun-loving conservatives are fooled into believing Israel arms preschoolers to counter school shootings. More astoundingly, they go on to endorse such child-friendly products like “Puppy Pistol,” “Gunny Rabbit” and the magical “Uzi-corn.”

“The intensive three-week Kinderguardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semi-automatics, and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars,” former republican congressman Joe Walsh says in one segment. “In less than a month — less than a month — a first-grader can become a first-grenade-er.”

In a subsequent CNN interview, Walsh admitted he was duped by a program that struck him as fishy. “I’m thinking to myself ‘well this is kind of crazy, but it is Israel and Israel is strong on defence,”‘ he explained.

Such reasoning has raised some concern in Israel that others may be naive enough to take Baron Cohen’s spoof literally.

“Yes, your satire was outrageously on point and Col. Erran Morad was spot on. Still, bad enough that Israel gets demonized for the things it actually does, you have to go and make horrifying fake stuff up?” wrote Allison Kaplan Sommer, an English-language columnist for the Haaretz daily. “Satire or not, I’m afraid the American public is going to be left with the impression, that we are, in fact, gun fans when the truth is our gun control is a million times stricter than in the U.S.”