Krav Maga – the official system of the Israeli Defense Force
Krav Maga
IKMF – International Krav Maga Federation
Immediately following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the Israeli systems of combat, security, and self-defense became the most sought after training in the Military, Law Enforcement, and civilian theatres.
At Logan International Airport in Boston, the airport where the terrorists boarded two of the airplanes which were converted into the vehicles of their suicide terror mission, the Chief Director of operations was immediately replaced by the former Chief Director of security for Israel’s National Airport, Ben Gurion, and the Israeli Sky Marshal Academy.
The newly reformed United States Federal Air Marshal Service immediately sent all of their instructors and teams of Air Marshals to Israel to learn at the Arazim Training Center, the training center belonging to the Israeli General Security Service (SHABAK) which also governs the Israeli Sky Marshal Training Academy, to learn the secrets and tactics of Israel’s effective Sky Marshal program.
The United States Transportation Safety Administration sent a delegation of Airport security Directors to the Israeli Aviation Authority Security Academy to learn effective methods, strategies, and systems for effectively securing U.S. airports.
The United States Government brought in teams of Israeli Secret Service and Special Forces agents and instructors to educate and train all facets of the U.S. security apparatus including military, police, and government security divisions in effective strategies and tactics on addressing and countering unconventional terrorism and suicide terrorism.
In the civilian world, individuals were taking the initiative to arm themselves with the necessary skills and tactics to effectively defend themselves and prepare themselves to effectively respond should they ever come face to face with a terror incident such as the one on board the high jacked aircrafts of 9/11 where the only possible chance of survival were the civilian passengers.
Immediately, Krav Maga became the leading choice for civilians.
So why is it that Krav Maga and Israeli based combat systems suddenly became so popular? Well first, it’s important to understand that although Krav Maga was just now starting to take over the spotlight, Krav Maga, and Israeli based combat and counter-terror systems have been just as popular in the eighties and nineties as they are today among the military and law enforcement communities.
The U.S. as well as many other foreign country military and police forces have been sending their units to Israel regularly to learn and cross train with Israeli units for years. Israel’s reputation and experience in the theatre of combat and security has been regarded as next to none and this comes from two simple facts, first there is no other country in the world that has faced active fanatic and suicidal terror attacks on a daily basis and has faced these attacks since the very first day it was founded as a country, and second there is no other country in the world that faces the threat of being exterminated from the face of the map if it loses to those attacks.
Israel has existed for only 60 years as an official State. During those 60 years, Israel hasn’t yet seen a single day of peace. Israel’s entire history has been a disposition of constant conflict interrupted by moments of war. The 1948 Independence war, the 56 Sinai Campaign, the 67 six day war, the 73 Yom Kippur war, the 82 first Israel/Lebanon war, the 87 first Intifada, the 2000 second Intifada, the 2006 second Israel/Lebanon war, and the 2009 Gaza war. Even when other Arab countries get engaged into a war that has nothing to do with Israel, Israel still seems to somehow get caught in the cross hairs of the violence such as in the 91 Persian Gulf war when the U.S. moved in to rescue Kuwait from the grips of Saddam Hussein, Iraq launched over 200 giant scud missiles at Israel.
So far, Israel has endured a war for every single decade it has existed. But the wars are not the bigger problem Israel faces. The bigger problem is the on going terror attacks that have been targeting Israel since day one and continue to do so till this very day. The world is made aware of Israel’s terror situation once in a while through the media, so most people don’t even know the true ratio of terror incidents that go on in Israel.
During peak season of attacks, such as in the first Intifada from 87 to 93 and the second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, Israel averages 8 to 12 suicide bombings per month. 90% of all suicide bombings the Israeli Security and Intelligence apparatus manages to prevent or intercept. The 8 to 12 bombings per month are the 10% that manage to get through the Security and Intelligence apparatus and actually detonate.
During low attack season, Israel averages 49 active terror alerts per day. This would be the equivalent of the United States Homeland Security threat alert scale hitting red an average of 49 times per day!
These facts are the contributing elements that give Israel the practical experience of dealing with violence and the ability to develop combat and self defense systems that are based on actual field experience and that are put to use and tested in the field under the most extreme conditions and situations on a daily basis.
This is the reason why for many years many of the world’s greatest Special Forces and combat units have been coming to Israel to train.
After 9/11, the only difference was that now the civilian world was being exposed to what was going on behind the scene and being made more aware of the fact that the United States and the majority of the world were relying on and approving of Israel’s systems for combat and self defense.
How did 9/11 affect the popularity of Krav Maga in the United States? Civilians were adamant on being trained in a proven and reputable system that won’t let them down in the face of real life violence. The role model civilians were turning to for answers were the military and police communities. After the 9/11 terror attacks it became clear that 1 – civilians had an important and real role in the war on terror, not just by being vigilant and aware but by also being prepared to take action if the need arose, and 2 – that the military and police community were the spearhead of the war on terror, and that since they were fighting an enemy that is probably more threatening and violent than the average street thug, the systems that they were using had to be more effective than the regular Martial Art or ‘Reality Based systems’ that were geared for the civilian community.
Therefore, the civilian community began turning to the military and policing community to learn what they were learning and using on this war on terror, and began to follow down the same path. This is where you suddenly saw a clear paradigm shift in the Martial Arts community. All of a sudden the covers of all Martial Art magazines displayed martial art instructors in military fatigues instead of gi’s, Martial Art systems were changing their names to suit a more ‘combat’ or military oriented image to make the inference that that system was the same tool being used by the military on the war on terror, many Martial art instructors were trying to get themselves in to various military and police units to train them in their systems so that they could advertise that their system was being used by those units on the war on terror and is therefore at the top of the ‘food chain’ of effective systems.
There was even one Israeli instructor teaching his own variation of Judo who decided to incorporate the words ‘Commando’ and ‘Krav Maga’ into his system and began to falsely claim that his system was the official system of the Israeli Defense Force.
However, one constant remained. Krav Maga was a system developed by a soldier for soldiers for the single purpose of real life survival. Even before 9/11, Krav Maga was already being used by many military and police units around the world including the United States.
This fact gave civilians the assurance they were looking for in a reliable and real world combat proven system and is the reason as to why Krav Maga suddenly became among the most popular system in the civilian world.
So where did Krav Maga really come from and how did it end up becoming the official system of the Israeli Defense Forces and Special Forces?
Imi Lichtenfeld was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1910. Shortly after, his family relocated to Bratislava, Slovakia where Imi grew up. His father, Samuel Lichtenfeld, had a great deal of experience in boxing and wrestling. Samuel ended up joining the police force where he became a detective and held the leading record for successful arrests as well as serving as the police force’s self defense instructor. At the same time, Samuel also opened up a fitness gym that incorporated training in boxing, wrestling, and Judo. Imi, at a very young age began training at his father’s gym focusing mostly on the fighting and self defense oriented training.
In the 1930’s Europe was beginning to fall under the grips of the Nazi movement. Anti-Semitism was spreading rapidly throughout the streets of Europe, Jewish people were consistently targeted and violently attacked.
Imi began to organize small groups of Jewish people to form an underground defense organization that patrolled the streets of his community and defended Jews that were being attacked by Nazi followers and supporters.
This allowed Imi to gain a tremendous amount of real fighting experience and allowed Imi to quickly distinguish between sport fighting and street fighting. It allowed Imi to learn and assess precisely what would work in a real life altercation against an attacker and what strategies were necessary to effectively and quickly dominate a violent attack and terminate the attacker’s capability to continue to fight.
Imi used all of this knowledge and experience to start developing his system for self defense.
In 1939 when World War II broke out, Imi joined the Czech Legion and contributed his part to fighting the Nazis on the battlefield as a combat soldier. This experience only further helped Imi to apply and test his system out under more grueling and complex threatening situations.
Imi moved to Jewish Palestine, the land that would later be proclaimed as Israel. The threat the Jewish people faced in this land was not Nazi anti-Semitism anymore, it was now the threat of the Arab extremists who were violently opposed to the presence of the Jewish religion in that region. Israel had not been proclaimed yet and there was no Israeli Defense Force, instead the defense of the Jewish people fell to the hands of the underground Jewish Defense Leagues known as the Haganah (the Hebrew term for defense), the Palyam, (Plugot Yam – the Hebrew term for Sea Companies) and the Palmach (Plugot Mahatz – the Hebrew term for Strike Companies).
I was quickly noted for his vast fighting capability and experience as well as his expertise in self-defense and hand-to-hand combat and was placed in charge of training the Jewish Defense Leagues in Hand-to-hand combat as well as other unconventional warfare tactics such as stealth maneuvers, sentry removal, close-quarters-combat, knife fighting, stick fighting, and bayonet tactics.
This underground survival and strategical fighting carried on relentlessly day and night for several years and finally, on May 14, 1948, the United Nations officially declared the creation of the State of Israel and the Israeli flag bearing the Star of David was raised in the land for the first time.
Not even a week passed after that declaration that Israel found it’s self engaged in its first war that would put the might and determination of the Jewish people to the test. The newly born Israel was attacked on all fronts, from the North, the East, and the South, by the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt whose only goal was to eliminate the State of Israel and rid the region of the Jewish people.
The Jewish people determined to put an end to their history of being targeted for annihilation and beginning a new future of peace in their homeland, fought hard and within several days defeated their enemies causing them to retreat back to their countries.
Immediately following the war, the Israeli Defense Force was officially established.
Imi Lichtenfeld was immediately assigned as the Chief Commander of the IDF’s Hand-to-hand combat and Physical fitness division. His system of self-defense, which was now injected with even more real combat experience and that had been put to the test through years of conflict and war, was branded with the Hebrew name of Krav Maga – Contact Combat in English, and was officially designated as the Israeli Defense Force’s Self-Defense and Hand-to-hand Combat system.
From this point on Krav Maga would be put to the test many more times in violent conflict and wars, and would only continue to evolve from its experience into the modern battle tested and proven system it is today.
Imi would retire from the IDF in 1968 after 20 years of service. He then founded the Israeli Krav Maga Federation and pursued his goal of spreading Krav Maga around the world so that every man, woman, and child could learn a system that would help them stay safe and alive if faced with violence. Imi passed away in 1998, but his legacy and goal carry forward today with his most closest student Avi Moyal , Eyal Yanilov ,Gabi Noch ,Eli Ben Ami and others
Krav Maga in the Israeli Defense Force today.
Contrary to several claims that have been made by one or two civilian instructors attempting to profit from Krav Maga’s success, till today the entire Israeli Defense Force including its Special Forces Division, only has one official system for Self-Defense and Hand-to-hand Combat, and that system is Krav Maga.
Naturally, as time progressed and the battlefield changed to incorporate new methods, tactics, and weapons of attack, Krav Maga also progressed to adapt to the changing face of the battlefield. The unique fact about Krav Maga is that it evolves and progresses at a quicker rate than other systems out there. This is due to the fact that it is in use in conflict every single day by the Israeli Defense Force, Police, and Security apparatus and the second that an element changes on the battlefield or in the streets that change is immediately registered and allows for an immediate assessment and update to the system.
Krav Maga in the IDF is governed by two official bodies. The first is Wingate, the Israeli National Institute for Physical Fitness Education. The Wingate Institute is a large campus that sits on the shore of Netanya, North of Tel Aviv. The IDF has a small section on that campus allocated to it, this section is called Bahad 8 (Bahad is the acronym for Basis hadraha, which means training base).
Bahad 8 is responsible for all Krav Maga training as it relates to the general army. It’s here that all soldiers destined to becoming Krav Maga instructors receive their certification. Krav Maga instructors in the IDF are not combat soldiers, they complete basic training and then are transferred to Bahad 8 to undergo a 2 month Krav Maga instructor course. Once they successfully complete the course they are assigned to either a regular combat battalion or one of the IDF’s Special Forces Units to serve as their Krav Maga instructors. Given the nature of the task they will carry out and the fact that the instructor certification course is only 2 months long, candidates interested in becoming Krav Maga instructors in the IDF must already possess a previous background in Martial Arts.
The second governing authority for Krav Maga in the IDF is the Special Forces Division Counter-Terror and Special Operations School – the CTS (Betsepher L’Lochama B’terror or LOTAR for short). This unit is situated in a classified base located somewhere in Central Israel.
The Counter-terror and Special Operations School is responsible for all training, certification, and Research and Development that relates to the Special Forces.
The CTS is in charge of training all the IDF’s Special Forces and Special Operation units in Counter-terror warfare, urban warfare, hostage rescue, tactical shooting and Krav Maga as it relates to the specific work of the Special units.
The Krav Maga instructors at the CTS, although governed administratively by Wingate, are under the command of the Special Forces Division. The instructors here in addition to completing their basic training and Krav Maga instructor certification course, must also complete a Counter-terror certification course (course Lochem Lotar).
The Krav Maga training the Special units receive at the CTS is divided into two sections. The first section the SF recruits receive while attending the CTS for their Counter-terror certification training. The second section is advanced specialized training the units receive if their work requires the use of specialized empty handed tactics and strategies.
The Krav Maga training Special Forces recruits undergo while at the Counter-terror School is among the hardest and most grueling training they receive while going through their warrior certification process.
Israel is in a unique situation with its military. Given the nature of Israel’s threatening environment and relatively small population, military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens. Males must serve three years (four years if they are selected for Special Forces) and females must serve two years.
In every single military force around the world soldiers must first serve in a regular combat unit for at least four to five years before being allowed to undergo selection for the Special Forces. In Israel, given the circumstances, the limited Defense budget, and the limited service time soldiers are committed for, the army has three to four years total to make use of the soldier.
Therefore, unlike the rest of the world’s military forces, in Israel a draftee can be selected for the Special Forces without previous regular service. The selection process begins during the draftee’s last year of high school, if he passes the aptitude and extensive psychological testing, he will be invited to a selection phase try out for one of the Special units. If the draftee successfully completes the selection phase, he will be assigned to a Special unit and begin his training. The training starts with 4 months of basic infantry training, followed by 2 months of advanced combat training, followed by the unit specific Warrior certification training that will last anywhere from an additional year to two years.
This time constraint puts our training in a very specific structure. With the Krav Maga training for example, the army does not have the luxury of time to train a soldier to become a proficient martial artist. In addition to the time constraint that exists in training the soldiers, IDF soldiers go into training at the age of 18 and by 20 years old they will be certified warriors sent into the field to fight face to face with Hezbollah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad terrorists that average 28 to 48 years of age and already have years of fighting experience behind them.
So the IDF is in a position where it has A) no time to train its soldiers and B) it needs to train a 20 year old to the point that he will survive any encounter he faces under any circumstances.
These are two issues that are specifically addressed and targeted in the principles of Krav Maga. Krav Maga is a system that was developed to conform to the individual as opposed to the individual having to conform to the system like in many Martial Art systems. The focus of Krav Maga is to arm the individual with the necessary strategies and tactics to dominate and terminate a violent encounter in minimal time and it uses strategies and tactics that can be learned, adopted, and effectively implemented in a very short period of time.
The Krav Maga system and training in the IDF focuses on developing the 3 important elements of combat:
1 – Mental preparation
The first phase of the Krav Maga training that all soldiers go through in the IDF revolves around developing the most important element in combat the mindset. It’s only with the proper mindset that an individual can survive the most complicated situations, or be able to continue fighting even while severely injured.
You can look at an individual who is an accomplished martial artist with years of training behind him, who has unmatched technique, is quick, and dominates the ring or the mat in training and in competition. If this individual doesn’t possess the proper mindset for combat, and is suddenly attacked and overtaken by fear and shock, chances are more than probable that he will not survive that encounter. If his mind shuts down, his body will not function and will not even allow him to use any of the great skills he has.
However, you can take an individual who has absolutely no training experience behind him, but possesses the proper survival mindset that will not allow him to lose under any circumstances. If this individual is suddenly attacked, his mind will take over and drive him to fight for his life without stopping, even if he gets hurt, until his attacker is no longer a threat to him. In this situation there will be no proper technique used, due to the individual’s lack of experience, there’s even the chance that due to the lack of proper technique the individual himself will get injured by not properly striking his target, however he will almost always end up with better results in surviving the attack than the martial artist in the first example whose mind will shut down during the attack and not help him survive at all.
The types of situations IDF soldiers face in the field usually place them in unfavorable odds. There’s an average of one to two attempts per month of kidnapping IDF soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas or Hamas terrorists. This usually occurs by the terrorists driving around, 3 to 4 in a vehicle, trying to find a lone soldier standing at a bus stop or walking down a street, pulling up next to the soldier, then quickly grabbing hold of the soldier, sometimes through an open window while two of the terrorists get out of the vehicle to shove the soldier inside.
Another popular method used at kidnap attempts is in the field, similar to the attack and kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 25, 2006. Corporal Shalit was in a team of five soldiers on guard duty at a point on the Israel/Gaza border. Hamas terrorists quietly encroached to the soldier’s check post and fired a Rocket Propelled Grenade round (RPG) into their tank. Three of the soldiers were instantly killed, and two including Corporal Shalit were wounded and knocked unconscious, Shalit also sustained a broken hand in that attack. The terrorists quickly scooped up Shalit, collected the weapons of all the soldiers and fled into Gaza through an underground tunnel.
Like in the above described scenarios, most of the soldiers that encounter an attack and kidnap attempt are placed in great disadvantages such as being out numbered by attackers or being injured at the point that they have to fight to survive.
It is only the proper survival/killer instinct mindset that will allow an individual a fighting chance at escaping and surviving such encounters.
This type of mindset is one that can be developed with the proper drills and training. In order to develop this mindset in the soldiers during Krav Maga training various drills are used such as:
-during the Krav Maga training sessions which last anywhere from 2 to 6 hours a day, the soldiers are always first worn out completely with extensive physical punishment training. Only after they have been completely worn out do the mindset training drills begin. This is an important factor for two reasons, first soldiers have to learn how to fight and survive from the worst case positions, meaning when they are at a tactical and physical disadvantage. It makes no sense to teach someone how to try to survive a situation that they are already in an advantageous position to win.
The second reason, is that you have to learn how to know yourself and feel yourself when you are at your absolute bottom, and then train yourself how to work up from that point. If you train yourself to work up from the point that you are not completely physically and mentally drained, when you are put in a real situation that suddenly brings you to absolute mental and physical exertion, you will be too distracted registering and trying to adapt to this new feeling that you won’t be able to mentally focus on your primary task, which is to survive, and physically bring your body to execute the steps it needs to to get you out of the situation.
Once the soldiers are brought to the point of physical and mental exertion, the mental aggression drills begin. One such drill is where the entire group, usually 25 to 40 soldiers, are placed in a circle where they link arms with one another. One soldier is placed in the center of the circle, and on the blow of the whistle he is given a time frame to escape the circle. He is not allowed to jump over the wall of soldiers, he is not allowed to crawl under them, and he is not allowed to hit. His only authorized means of escape is by physically breaking through the linked arms.
This may not sound like a difficult task, however when you are trying to use nothing more than physical might to break through a wall of people using all of their strength to hold you in place, while you are physically at the point that you can barely lift your arms up in the air and your mouth is completely dry from exertion, even the big strong soldiers have a difficult time reaching their objective.
The catch here is that if the soldier does not succeed in escaping the circle in the time limit given, he is brought back to the center of the circle, and he repeats the process over and over until he finally breaks through.
Another mental aggression development drill is where one soldier is placed in the corner of the training room, the entire group bunches up against him with the goal of smothering him into the corner. On the command of the whistle the soldier has to force his way out through the group, again he is not allowed to climb over top of them or crawl under them. He his again given a time limit to accomplish his objective. Forcing your way out of a corner through a wall of people pushing against you, drains you of everything you have and can take several minutes to accomplish. Once the soldier finally makes it out to the other end of the human resistance pile on, he is greeted by an instructor in full sparring gear who he has to fight for several minutes. Every soldier may end up performing these drills several times per training session, this is also one of the few reasons as to why the Krav Maga training they go through can last up to six hours a day!
2 – Physical preparation
Once the mind has been cultivated into the necessary survival tool that will lead the individual to the proper response under stress, the body which is the vehicle that carries out the commands of the mind has to also be tuned up to ensure it carries out the commands on queue, quickly and properly.
The type of physical training that is incorporated into the Krav Maga training in the IDF is not geared at making the soldiers big and strong. It’s geared at making their bodies physically capable of responding properly to the type of confrontations they face.
Counter-terror warfare is a very unique dynamic. Terrorists structure their attacks in a way that will be conducive to them achieving their end objective which is always the death and destruction to innocent human lives, with no interruptions.
With the exception of the end objective, this structure is the exact same structure used by military and law enforcement units when we have a mission to carry out. The end objective is to carry out the mission successfully with no injury to any innocent bystanders or unit members, and with out the target being able to react quickly enough to our mission and be able to fight back or escape.
In order to achieve this end objective, we will gather as much intelligence on the target as possible to learn everything about it as we can such as when it moves and where it moves to, we will use the necessary amount of man power to ensure all angles are covered, the necessary type of equipment to ensure we can mitigate any obstacles, and we will select the time at which we will strike the target which will always be the best time possible to catch the target off guard.
When terrorists decide to carry out an attack, weather it’s against a military check post or a crowd of innocent civilians, they will implement the exact same elements to ensure maximum success such as studying their target to the point where they know all the target’s vulnerabilities and when the best time would be to strike the target to catch it at a point where immediate response/resistance maybe unavailable and where anyone situated at the target will be caught off guard.
This principle is what we call in Israel the -5, and this principle is what all of our training is based on. The -5 is a scale that isolates the three crucial elements of combat:
1 – Mental response
2 – Physical response
3 – Tactical response
In the -5, those three elements are at their most vulnerable disposition for combat. Mentally, our mind is not prepared for or focused on anything that may relate to combat or fighting. Physically, our body is no position to begin fighting, you may be sitting down or lying down or in any other position in which you would first have to restructure or reposition yourself in order to be able to fight. And finally tactically, which relates to our tactical tools for the fight, this may be a firearm or it may be your bare hands. Your tactical tools are not in a position to begin fighting, your M4 is slung on your back, your Glock 19 is securely fastened in its holster, or your hands are buried in your pockets.
A terrorist’s mentality will always dictate that we will be in the -5 when they strike and they will be in the +5. Meaning that when the terrorists already begins to fire at us, we have to first mentally perceive the attack, then physically position ourselves for fighting, and then deploy our tactical tools.
It’s important to keep in mind that you physically will not respond to an attack until you have first responded to it mentally. The human mind always goes through 4 steps of reaction:
1 – Perceive: you won’t respond to something that you don’t know isn’t there. So an attacker decides to strike you in the face, your mind will first perceive an action coming towards your face. If the attacker attacks you from behind, obviously you won’t perceive that strike coming towards your face, once the strike makes contact with your head your mind will now perceive that you’ve just been hit in the head by something and it will quickly go on to step number two.
2 – Analyze: so your mind perceives an action coming towards your face, it will now quickly analyze that action to determine what it is. At the point where it has determined what the action is, in this example a strike to the face, it now goes on to step number three.
3 – Formulate: it must now decide on a plan of action. Does it want to duck, block, move backwards, move forwards? Once it has formulated a plan of action it goes on to step number four.
4 – Execute: the mind must now transmit the plan through the nerves to the muscles to make the skeleton move according to the plan.
It takes the average person 0.25 seconds to go from step 1 to step 4, but this does not include the actual time it takes to carry out the physical action decided on in step 4.
So take the average speed of a punch, or stabbing motion of a knife, or even bullets flying at you from an assailant’s firearm, and keep in mind that when that threatening action has already been deployed you are only beginning step 1 of your response. In essence, the attacker has a 0.25 second head start on you, after 0.25 seconds, you now have to execute the physical action to address the attack.
The physical preparation of the soldiers has to be one that will allow them to instinctively explode into action as fast as possible. Physical training such as lifting heavy weights or running long distances has a tendency to slow the body down. Instead, the type of drills that are used in the IDF’s Krav Maga training are drills that focus on developing neurological and physical speed.
One example of these drills is called the ‘6 on 6’. The soldiers are lined up at one end of the Krav Maga training room, and on the command they must sprint as quickly as they can to the other end of the room, a distance of approximately 15 meters, and back for six laps. They then rest for 30 seconds, and repeat the six laps trying to beat the time of the previous round they just ran. They perform six sets of these six lap sprints.
To add to the quick response time training element, little things are added to each drill such as having the soldiers lye face down on the ground at the start line, so that when the whistle is blown they must explode up to their feet, turn around and then run.
3 – Tactical preparation
This element focuses on training the soldiers in perfecting the tactical tools they will use in the field, if we are talking about Krav Maga specifically then that means our natural body weapons such as strikes, the use of knives and sticks, and the use of our firearms as cold weapons.
As for natural body weapons, again the IDF does not have the luxury of time to train it’s soldiers, so the focus is on using weapons that are easy to learn, easy to access and use, are easy to execute with the gear the soldiers wear in the field, and can cause an effective result that will allow the soldier to dominate the confrontation.
Dominating the confrontation does not mean knocking out the attacker, it is very difficult and almost impossible to actually knockout an aggressive attacker in a real confrontation. Dominating or effective result, means disrupting the attacker’s physical capabilities to the point where it also has a psychological effect and reverses the attacker’s disposition from offensive to defensive, or from the +5 to the -5.
Examples of this point may be the use of a jab motion with the fingers extended to attack the eyes. Effectively attacking the eyes of the attacker, puts him in a position where his vision is now disrupted and he becomes more concerned with and focused on not being able to see than he is with charging forward and carrying out his attack. This may slow him down and it may diminish the level of aggression he began the attack with which makes it that much easier for us to now access more vital targets on his body with more damage causing means.
Another example may be a strike to the throat, where again his mind will now divide up its responsibilities from attacking us to also focusing on the damage his body just sustained, to also trying to get him to breath properly. This will automatically slow him down, and disrupt his aggressive attack and his attack strategy which opens up the door for us to gain dominance in that confrontation.
The majority of the natural based weapons the soldiers are taught are rudimentary weapons geared at attacking large and easily accessible targets on the attacker as quickly as possible to either hinder the attacker’s ability to physically function or to simply keep him away. An example of this is a simple jab, cross, low kick combination.
As for strategy in the IDF Krav Maga system, the focus is on always keeping the soldier in a dominant and effective position. For example we never teach any techniques that result in the defender falling to the ground during the execution of the technique, we want the soldier to always remain on their feet. We also never teach any throwing moves, throws can sometimes be easy to counter, in many throwing moves the attacker can hold on to you and take you to the ground with him as he falls, and the fact is that it is not easy for a smaller person to throw a bigger person especially if the smaller person is stacked with 70 to 100 pounds of gear.
The battlefield of today is very diverse in terms of the types of weapons terrorists use to attack soldiers in Israel. These weapons include hand guns, assault rifles, knives, machetes, lead pipes, slingshots, and even hand grenades.
The Krav Maga training the soldiers go through in the IDF also focuses on teaching them effective defenses against armed attackers. The training includes extensive drills to train the soldiers to respond quickly and instinctively to an attack with a weapon from all possible positions and scenarios. For example they will learn how to disarm a terrorist holding a gun to their head while they are on their knees in an execution position, or to counter a vicious knife attack while lying down on the ground, or defend against an attacker armed with a lead pipe while a second attacker is also attacking them, or to disarm a threat armed with a hand grenade or micro explosive, or even how to surgically neutralize a suicide bomber about to detonate in a crowd of people.
These are all examples of situations IDF soldiers have experienced in the past or continue to experience today. The Krav Maga training of the IDF and the Israeli Special Forces is based solely on practical threat situations that are realistic to the operational environment.
The proper use of the Assault Rifle or handgun as a cold weapon is also a crucial skill. The preference and focus is always to terminate the threat as quickly as possible to prevent injury or death to ourselves or innocent bystanders, which in the majority of the cases means to shoot it. However firearms are prone to technical malfunctions which may place the soldier in a predicament that he can’t clear the malfunction quick enough to be able to shoot the threat before the threat can make contact with him, or from a tactical perspective it may be more important to first stop the threat from advancing and control distance before shooting it.
There are three types of injuries a firearm can cause.
1 – an instantaneously lethal injury. Meaning the bullet penetrates the attacker’s central nervous system and shuts his body down instantly.
2 – a time induced lethal injury. Meaning the bullet causes an injury that will have a lethal end result in a matter of several seconds to several minutes. Until death occurs, the attacker may still be able to function in the confrontation.
3 – an incapacitating non-lethal injury. Meaning the bullet causes damage that will physically disable the attacker immediately, but will not cause death.
4 – a non-incapacitating wounding injury. Meaning that the attacker will not die as a result of the shot, but can continue to physically function in the confrontation.
In injury types 2, 3 and 4, if the attacker is in a close proximity to the soldier he can still attack the soldier before the
