Israeli Martial Arts Articles

Israel is a very small country and must protect its people from adversity on almost all its borders. The Israel Defense Forces have been involved in several major wars and border conflicts and this makes it one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world. The majority of Israelis are drafted into the military at the age of eighteen. Men serve three years and women serve two to three years, followed by service in the reserve forces where they do several weeks of reserve duty every year until their forties. Thus almost every Israeli citizen is part or has been part of the Israeli military. Israel is constantly training its military with the newest techniques possible and therefore Israeli arts ar constantly evolving. It is the desire of Israel to have the best trained forces in all aspect of the military arts.
The history of Israeli Martial Arts is controversial so we are sharing articles that have been submited to USADOJO.COM but we cannot verify their validity.

Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following:
- The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.
- Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.
- The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed inIsrael at Intel.
(More Iinteresting Statistics)

By Avi Nardia and Sam Adrian Markey - To understand Israeli martial arts you need to understand the history of Israel and why the art was developed in the first place, and to see why it must continue to evolve. You need to understand the goal of the art. No one can sit in Los Angeles or anywhere else and teach Israeli martial arts and claim to be the official system of the Israeli army if they have never served a day in the Israeli army. Remember, Israeli martial arts was a concept before it was a "martial art". (Read Article)

By Jim Wagner - Four years ago the martial arts community outside of Israel’s borders knew of only one Israeli martial arts system, and that was Krav Maga מגע קרב (in Hebrew Krav קרב meaning combat or fight, and Maga מגע meaning touch or contact). Then, after returning from my third trip from Israel, having been invited by the Israeli government to train Israeli military and police units in my own Reality-Based Personal Protection system, I wrote an article in Black Belt magazine spotlighting Krav Maga and introduced readers to the equally popular systems of the Holy Land such as Hisardut הישרדות (Dennis Hanover’s system known in Hebrew as Survival), LOTARלוט״ר (deriving its name from the counterterrorist school Lochama Be’Terror) (the fighting system for Israel’s counterterrorism school), and the original Israeli martial of KAPAP פּ״פּק (a Hebrew acronym for Krav Panim l’Panim, ים נפּל יםנפּ קרב face-to-face combat), which is alive and well in the modern world thanks to the likes of Lieutenant Colonel Chaim Peer and Major Avi Nardia. (Read Article)

International Krav-Maga Federation - The history of Krav Maga is as exciting as the system it self. The founder of Krav Maga was Imi Sde-Or. The history is closely linked to the development of the state of Israel and the need for the Israeli military to protect is country in one of the worlds most hostile areas. (Read Article)

By Noah Gross - Google the term Israeli martial arts and you get over 1.7 million pages. A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry will reveal two short lines listing two names, Kapap and Krav Maga as Israeli Martial Arts. Although there are several other names used for Israeli Martial Arts, these two are the most well known, and they captivate the imaginations of millions of people around the world. A discussion of what constitutes an Israeli martial art would easily provide the bases for an article, but it will not be the subject of this article. Instead we will discuss the many misconceptions regarding Israeli martial arts and its origins. (Read Article)

By Avi Nardia
If you carry a gun in a holster or if you don’t use a holster and carry with the gun tucked into your pants or clothing, and whether it is concealed or not, you must remember this rule: anything you carry may be used against you! If you carry any type of firearm, no matter the status of the firearm whether drawn or not, and you are in a confrontation, it will be considered a firearm confrontation. If you carry a knife into a confrontation, it also will be considered a knife confrontation even if you didn’t mean for it to be one. These rules are important to understand because of the third stage of a conflict. (Read Article)

“Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.” Unknown

By Avi Nardia - Knowledge and judgment come from experience. Experience comes from good or bad judgment regarding life situations, which leads to evolution over time. That’s how Close Quarter Battle (CQB) and Defensive Tactics is built up and improved every day. There is old story a Zen teacher told me “In the Zen temple at the time of evening meditation the cat that used to live there made too much noise. So the Zen teacher asked a student to tie the cat up each time they would meditate. After years had gone by, the teacher and the student passed away and so did the cat. A new cat was brought to the temple and the tradition of tying the cat was maintained. 100 years later, many Zen philosophies were written around how important it is to tie a cat at evening meditation…” (Read Article)

By Noah Gross
It was winter, Jan 1941; WWII had been raging across the globe since September 1939. In a little room in Palestine two men sat down to discuss the curriculum for an upcoming Course of Kapap (1) instructors for the "Hagana" (2) , the first of its kind to take place. Rafa (3) the commander of the course, an advocate of British discipline was questioning the 21 year old Maishel sent to him to teach his short stick fighting method (4). Rafa: Where did you learn this? Maishel: We didn't, we developed it on our own! (Read Article)

By Tad Nelson - On a sunny day in June 2003, according to witnesses, a group of men who looked like Palestinian laborers were seen transporting diapers and lounging around a van outside of a mosque in Hebron. When a Hamas terrorist mastermind named Kawasme emerged from the crowd of worshippers, he unexpectedly came face to face with the group of men transporting the diapers as they pulled out their firearms and ordered him to stop. Kawasme, who was responsible for several terrorist bombings that had killed 52 people in Israel, had no way of knowing that the men he was now facing were undercover Israeli agents, members of an elite Israeli Special Forces unit known as the Yamam. (Read Article)

by Uri Kaffe with Avi Nardia - Gun disarming is one of the most important skills you want to obtain when training in a martial art that claims to be about self-defense. Now that reality based martial arts have become extremely popular, many so called reality based instructors have started to show knife/gun disarming techniques without realizing that they contain deadly mistakes that can get their students killed! (Read Article)

By Avi Nardia - Events of the last several years have finally sent the “wake-up call” to the entire world. The United States begrudgingly joins with many countries in the sobering realization that safety is no longer a guarantee. Most are beginning to see the big picture. Crime and terrorism are no longer threats that happen to someone else. Violations of public and personal safety have become increasingly open and brazen. (Read Article)

By Avi Nardia - September 11 attacks and suicide bombing was something new for most Americans but for many terror victims around the world such as Israel, Russia, and Seri Lanka who have lived with it for more than last 50 years, it was sad but not new. Only in the magnitude of the destruction and loss of life was new. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon harnessed modern Technology to the age-old tactic of suicide terrorism. Because the hijackers were willing to die, they could turn passenger jets into deadly missiles and inflict massive casualties. (Read Article)

By Avi Nardia - ISRAELI CQB There are two kinds of fights: for your Ego or for your life. CQB is made to fight for your life. The Israeli CQB Martial Art of Kapap has been written in a special ink, blood. The knowledge came from experience, many times learned by tragic mistakes, then studying the results to understand what needs to be done the next time. Unfortunately, Israel is the most experienced nation in the world when it comes to terror, and that is why it has developed one of the most valued CQB training systems in the world.( Read Article)

By Jim Wagner - Many of you who read www.realfighting.com are Krav Maga practitioners. Lately some of you may have been hearing about other Israeli martial arts systems that you never even knew existed; terms such as KAPAP, Hisardut, LOTAR, Krav Magen, and others. You may be asking yourself, do these systems even really exist, or are they fabricated to ride the successful coat tails of Krav Maga? Ever since I wrote a feature article for Black Belt magazine about the Israeli martial arts, it has created quite a stir in the Krav Maga communities.
(Read Article)

LOTAR is a complete combat concept, derived from real-life situations and personal experience, LOTAR focuses on teaching techniques that recognize, assess and neutralize a threat in the quickest, simplest and most instinctive way possible." In the beginning there was KAPAP, which means face to face combat (krav panin l'panim in Hebrew), this included only the fighting techniques that were necessary for the battlefield. These included hand-to-hand combat, stick-fighting using short and long sticks, live and edged weapons, and obstacle courses designed to toughen them physically and mentally. (Read Article)

By WR Mann - If there’s anyplace in the Middle East that resembles America’s 19th century Wild West, it has to be Netanya, Israel.This notorious city north of Tel Aviv is home to Russian mobsters and active terrorists; it is also home to Krav Maga’s toughest school. This is where Haim Gidon heads the governing body for Krav Maga worldwide, the Israeli Krav Maga Association (IKMA). (Read Article)

By Mike Lee Knarek and Roy Lantz - In a nation where people live every day with the threat of terrorism and possible military attacks from bordering countries, Israel has long understood the value of a strong defense. As with their country, Israelis too understand the importance of being able to defend themselves in the event of attack. This need has brought many styles of martial arts to Israel. (Read Article)