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  • 2018-02-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Is This an Armed Teacher Protecting Students at an Israeli School? (en)
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  • A photograph purportedly showing an armed teacher at a school in Israel tends to get passed around the Internet every time there is a school shooting in the United States. Second amendment advocates have been using this image since at least 2012 (when twenty children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut) to argue that arming teachers would prevent future fatalities. And, unfortunately, it was posted again in February 2018, in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Florida: This image is real in the sense that it has not been digitally altered (other than the text) and it appears that it was truly taken in Israel. However, this image was not taken at a school, and Israel's school security practices make it unlikely that the armed woman in the photograph is a teacher. The earliest version of this image that we could find came from a 23 June 2011 post on Teejaw.com about a mass shooting at a summer camp in Norway that left nearly 80 people dead. The author of that post argued that the death toll would have been lower if one of the adults had been armed and used the viral photograph (which they claimed was taken in the Old City of Acre, Israel in 2002) to show how other countries protect their children: One can tell by simply looking at the photograph that it does not show a traditional classroom; the poster noted that this image was taken during a school outing. In other words, this photograph cannot be used to support the claim that teachers in Israel carry weapons in school. The original post did say that the armed woman in the photograph was a teacher, but we are skeptical about this label, as despite what this meme says, it is not commonplace for teachers in Israel to carry weapons. A 2013 article in Campus Safety also noted that schools would likely hire soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces, police officers, or security guards to escort field trips: When this photograph first went viral in 2012, Israeli Today took issue with the claim that all teachers in Israel carry guns. In fact, the Israeli web site wrote that it would be very uncommon for a teacher to be carrying a gun in the country, and surmised that the woman in the photograph was actually a security guard: This image does show a woman with a gun at her hip watching over or looking over a group of children. However, this photograph was not taken in a classroom, and the pictured woman is most likely a security guard, not a teacher. (en)
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