‘BEFORE I TEACH PEOPLE TO HIT, I TEACH THEM TO THINK’

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Avi Nardia, founder of the Israeli martial art KAPAP, has taught all over the world, and his students range from slum children in Kenya to business tycoons. In a special interview to Israel Hayom, Nardia discusses what makes a champion, and why he is an excellent ambassador for Israel in the world.

Avi Nardia: We teach people to survive in the snow and ice with nothing more than a knife

You know how you watch James Bond films and wonder why the director felt it necessary to go overboard? There’s no way someone could un-cuff his hands while his feet are tied, disarm four guards, and escape through the window using a rope made of bedsheets.

But after speaking to Avi Nardia, none of that seems “overboard.”

“When I make a rope out of toilet paper my students are shocked,” Nardia tells Israel Hayom, speaking from his home in Belgrade.

“It’s not a problem. It’s like making a rope out of straw or wool. You need to roll the paper in a certain way, weave it, make all sorts of folds and then you have a really strong rope, one my students can’t tear,” he says.

Nardia, 58, travels the world, doing good and sometimes frightening PR work for Israel. He is a master of several different martial arts and used his cumulative knowledge to develop an Israeli martial art known as KAPAP, which is different from the Krav Maga the IDF teaches in basic training.

“Basically, there is fighting while on your feet, fighting on the ground, fighting with weapons, and by combining those I built an Israeli martial art – KAPAP. The basic Krav Maga was developed in the 1960s and is limited to the knowledge that was available back then. Today, fighting has become much more complex and demands more knowledge – falls, punches, and kicks. In addition, self-defense demands familiarity with weapons – knife-fighting, handguns, rifles, because a terrorist will usually jump you with a weapon and you have to know how to disarm him,” Nardia says.

“The improvement KAPAP offers is that it includes everything. I put in wilderness survival – in ice, snow, and desert conditions. We have a seminar called ‘Just a Knife,’ in which a participant is given a knife and we teach him how to use it as a survival tool – how to build shelter, make a fire, and each day we teach fighting,” he says.

Nardia discusses the problems with the traditional Krav Maga: “There is a Latin saying, ‘Beware of the person of one book,’ because a person who’s read only one book in his life and bases all his knowledge and opinions on that book is dangerous. That’s the limitation I see in the Krav Maga we know, which is based on one person’s knowledge that in my opinion wasn’t professional enough. If you want to be the best judoka in the world, you need to concentrate on judo. If you want to be the world champion in fencing, focus on fencing, but to practice self-defense, to be a warrior, you can’t focus on only one thing. You need absolute knowledge. That’s the difference between doing this as a sport and as self-defense.”

Q: Give an example.

“When I taught kendo [traditional Japanese swordsmanship] in Israel, at one lecture some punk shouts, ‘What crap! Who fights like that, with a sword? What’ll you do on the street?’ I brought him onstage and used my finger to do everything I’d been doing with the sword, and he was shocked. You need to know how to transform knowledge. I don’t give people fish, I teach them to fish. The moment I give you a fish – technique – you’ll have something to eat, but if I teach you to fish, I’ve taught you a concept.”

“Before I train people to hit, I train them to think. I always say, ‘No brain – no KAPAP.’ If you want to fight me and don’t use your brain, you’ll fail. A person has to think, that’s the most important muscle. I’m a small guy, not some giant. In the US I’d pick the biggest people [to demonstrate] at my seminars, people who weighed 150 kg. [over 300 pounds], to show how I, weighing 65 kg. [143 pounds] could win.

Nardia demonstrates how to disarm a knife-wielding assailant

“First of all, you need to teach people to think, not panic. We have natural fears of choking, of being buried alive, so I run the escape seminar – training in which I kidnap people and teach them to free themselves from handcuffs, from zip ties, from tape that binds them – how to psychologically survive all sorts of situations, how to function under pressure. It’s a whole process of building, not just ‘kick and run.’

“I wasn’t born a genius, but I’m a repository of experience and that is what makes me a good teacher. I’m not a master who gets attacked by 80 people from every direction and jumps in the air. That happens in people’s dreams. I’m a master as a teacher who can see who I’m facing what they have and, mainly, what they lack, and I know how to fix it. I see myself as a martial artist. Why ‘artist’? An artist takes a rock, gives it a few whacks with a hammer, and a sculpture appears. I take a living sculpture, a person, and create something amazing.”

After being cut from the Israeli Air Force’s pilots course, Nardia served as a security officer and Krav Maga instructor. There, he realized he was destined to teach and guide. In 1984, he flew to Tokyo to fulfill his dream of studying martial arts.

“At the time, there was no Google. Suddenly, I land at a Japanese airport and realize that I don’t know where to go, but I landed on my feet. After seven or eight years in Japan, I came back to Israel and someone whom I served with suggested that I be a bodyguard for something that was classified at the time: Russia’s education minister had a Jewish lover, they had a son together, and he would come visit them in Jerusalem. They rented a car for me and I accompanied the minister on all his visits in Israel,” Nardia says.

Later, he enlisted in the Israel Police’s Special Forces, taught self-defense, operational tactics, and riot dispersal tactics at the police’s combat physical fitness school, and taught martial arts at Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University. Since then, he has taught elite anti-terror units all over the world.

“I can’t remember all the special forces [units] I’ve taught. Now I see pictures and suddenly remember that I taught there, too. I’ve trained a secret service unit here in Serbia, but my wife told me to stay away because it turned out that the unit wasn’t made up of normal people – half of them were criminals,” he says.

“Carlos Newton, who was MMA and UFC champion, was a student of mine from the age of 17. Joanna Jędrzejczyk [former UFC women’s champion], too. In Israel the top Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters – Ido Pariente, Eran Barak, Ora Levine – are former students of mine. I’ve worked with the Israeli rugby team, with the ASA Tel Aviv handball team, and with women’s basketball. I dealt more with sports injuries and rehabilitation, and I saw a lot of mistakes by professional coaches who didn’t know how to get the most out of their athletes.”

Q: Explain.

“In terms of physicality, elite athletes get to a point where they’re all the same. From there, what makes them a champion is a bit more psychology, motivation, emotional strength that will give you that little bit more. When I saw Arik Ze’evi crying at the 2012 London Olympics [Ze’evi lost to Dimitri Petrus in 43 seconds], I told him, ‘I don’t know who trained you, but he did bad work.’ He taught him technique, not spirit. As a trainer you need to teach body, mind, and spirit. We all study the body. Mind is how you connect the exercises. Spirit is [Diego] Maradona, for example. He might be a terrible person, a drug user, I don’t know what, but he has it. We all do, but with most of us it’s turned off and we need someone I call a ‘psychopath’ to turn it that inner fire.”

“There was a time in the army when I was working with youths who didn’t want to serve, but after talking to me, wanted to go into elite units. You need to cause people to make a mental, psychological change. When an athlete starts looking for excuses, his fire has died out. When I worked with the handball players, when a player would catch he’d go back to defense like a peacock, but when he’d miss, all of a sudden he’d start moving his hand like he had some medical problem, and would look at me and make movements as if he had some problem with his shoulder. I’d fall over laughing. After they miss, they have the excuses ready right away.

“For example, players who aren’t starting bandage themselves two hours before the game. They aren’t playing because the coach didn’t put them in, but they’ll bandage their knee and say they don’t know if they can play. They have to justify themselves to themselves, so they tell everyone they’re injured.

Q: Is that especially noticeable with Israelis?

“The most. We look for excuses for everything. When I asked my father about his paratroop wings he told me, ‘Forget about stories of heroism, we did what we had to, and that’s all.’ Today, we have excuses for everything, in every area – roads, state, sports. I let all my students know that I need results, not excuses. I see improvement in the students I bring to the edge. I saw that with Carlos Newton, who was world champion, and now he wants to make a comeback. I told him what my terms were if he wanted me to train him: that he listen to me. Not hear, listen.  A lot of the time they hear you, but don’t listen to what you say.

“For example, I was [Russian-Israeli tycoon] Arkady Gaydamak’s personal trainer and martial arts teacher. He was my worst student. He’s unbelievably clumsy, untalented, no coordination, I don’t think he could pound a nail into the wall. He went a long way in martial arts. He had no physical abilities, but he wanted to learn badly. The problem was he would hear, but not listen … Eventually, he made some good progress, but if he’d listen, I could have taken him 10 times as far as he went.”

Q: Is it all a question of mentality?

“Everything. It’s all mental … The Japanese call it “chi.” It’s an internal force that you can’t turn on, there’s no button. If I try to attack your child, you’ll see your inner mother find strength and turn into a tiger. In nature you can see a cat beat back a bear when she’s defending her kittens, and she’s not playing. You need to know how to turn on that trigger.

“There is the psychological matter of how a person should see themselves. The first work that should be done with soccer players or basketball players is psychological – creating commitment, identification with what they do. Then you need to work on their spirit, how to ‘turn it on’ when they take the field and go into battle. If the player isn’t ‘on’ it won’t work, they’ll never reach their maximum. A lot of people don’t know how to get the most out of themselves.

Nardia has trained special forces squads all over the world

“It’s a lot of psychology, a lot of tricks – how in the space of a second do you turn them from the nicest people into fighters. They can’t run after the ball – they have to be given drills that will make them fight for it. So what if they took it away? Keep fighting. I’ve seen fights in which one fighter took the other apart and then, for his ego, started to swing his arm around for one last punch and suddenly, the opponent’s head turns on and he takes down the other guy in a knockout. In battle, it’s never certain who will win until the end. If I sent you to fight Arik Ze’evi and you think that he’ll win because he’s an Olympic medalist, you’ve already lost. Because of that thinking. People need to be taught to think properly. If I take on Arik Ze’evi, I’ll eat him alive. That’s how I think. Not out of ego, but because that’s how you should go into battle.

“There’s a saying I tell my students: ‘You can kill me, but you can’t defeat me.” When Arik Ze’evi lost, the opponent ‘killed’ him, but the moment he dropped and started to cry, then he was defeated because he broke mentally. When a woman is raped, she is ‘killed’ – but she shouldn’t let them win. When you can inculcate this mentality in athletes, it doesn’t matter if they lose, because they won’t see themselves as losers. So kids need to be taught how to lose. The other guy was better, faster? Fine, I’ll come next year, next game, and I’ll train harder. I have only one hand, and my opponent has two? Find, that’s the situation, but it’s not an excuse.”

Q: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected martial arts?

“I’ve spoken to a few very famous teachers who shut down their schools and won’t open again. Martial arts is one of the fields that has been hardest hit by corona, which I think is causing needless panic. They’ve made it into Ebola, but it’s the flu. It’s sad to me to see it wiping out our field, especially since martial arts aren’t a sport and don’t get government funding. Trainers don’t receive salaries, and they’ll go broke.”

Over the years, Nardia has founded martial arts academies in Africa as part of what he calls a “social mitzvah.”

“I support schools in slums in Mombasa and in Kibera, and send them money so children there will walk a good path, rather than fall into crime. In Africa there are already 10 kids named Avi Nardia. Sadly, one of them died three months ago. It’s an honor that people are naming their kids after me, and it’s because I also teach morals and values. I won’t take on people who will go on to use what I teach them to do bad things.

“In one of the women’s seminars, where I teach how to escape all sorts of situations like attempted assault or rape, there was a student who asked me, while I was working with one of the women, ‘How can I grab her so she can’t get away?” I picked him up and smacked him in front of everyone and told him, ‘Get out, you’re a rapist.’ I could actually feel that he was a rapist who had come to learn what to do. I’m not ashamed to kick students out. When I see that something is wrong, I stop. When people ask me what they need to learn KAPAP I say, integrity. Do the right thing even when no one is watching, and that’s something lacking in a lot of martial arts.”

“I own a knife from [former Libyan dictator Muammar] Gaddafi’s collection that one of my students gave me after [Gaddafi] was executed. This was a kid who was there during the revolution, who walks around Libya wearing a shirt that has KAPAP written on it. My students have been training in Indonesia and Libya wearing KAPAP shirts for close to 15 years. My biggest achievement is that I teach in the city of Dachau. I taught there at a school in the industrial zone and from the window we could see the guard towers of the concentration camp. It was surreal that I, wearing a black shirt with a huge Star of David with KAPAP written on it, and everyone knowing I’m Jewish and Israeli, was teaching an Israeli martial art there.”

Q: Have you encountered anti-Semitism in your travels around the world?

“No. Maybe I wasn’t looking for it, and maybe it doesn’t exist in the way people talk about it. During the riots in the US, there were awful things there. Among other things, they spray-painted something about Palestine on a synagogue and immediately people rushed to say it was anti-Semitism, but when hooligans take to the streets all the hooligans show up.

“When I arrive in Israel, there’s a guy from Umm al-Fahm who has shown up for four seminars already to train and learn. I think that in sports and martial arts, we connect more as human beings. Salah al-Majaj, the son of former mayor of east Jerusalem Amin al-Majaj, trained with me. There were pilots and people from the Sayeret Matkal unit studying with me who said, ‘But he’s an Arab,’ and I told them, ‘That’s it. Anyone who want to leave, should leave.’ Kendo is a sport and I don’t mix politics and sports.”

“A few years ago, I land in Australia for a course and right away see that there are a few Arabs in the group. I grab two, give them a high-five, and put them next to the Israeli flag and make everyone stand for a group picture. I see that they’re going nuts but are afraid of me. Later, one of the guys took us all out for a meal and at the restaurant pulled out a roll of hundreds of dollars. I say, ‘Tell me who you are’ and he says, ‘I’m the son of the biggest drug dealer in Lebanon. I ran away from my father. I don’t want to be involved with crime and drugs, so I moved to Australia.’ He fell so much in love with KAPAP that he’d go to the Lebanese neighborhood in Australia wearing our shirt, which has KAPAP written on it in Hebrew and Israeli Special Forces written on it in English.”

Q: You define yourself as Israel’s ambassador to the world.

“Definitely, and I’m a good ambassador. I have students who studied karate for 20 years and never hung a Japanese flag in their schools, but when they started studying with me and then began KAPAP they hung an Israeli flag. That’s one of the things that makes an Israeli martial art unique – first of all, we hang the flag. Israel teaches purity of arms, morality, values, and a moral army. That’s what I try to teach people, not because I’m a hero or anything, but because it’s something my father taught me – morals, values, and love for Israel.”

Published:
https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/07/21/before-i-teach-people-to-hit-i-teach-them-to-think/

Kapap/Krav Maga/Israeli Jiu Jitsu

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new article 02092020 w/Avi for Martial Arts Masters Magazine

© Copyright 2020, Avi Nardia & Tim Boehlert

Kapap is a blend of multiple systems, originating in Israel, and by design to be a bridge between systems. It is inspired by the pioneers and of Israel and thier work as the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and is based on Jiu Jitsu.

In 1933, Feldenkrais met Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo in Paris. Kano encouraged him to study Judo under Mikinosuke Kawaishi. Feldenkrais became a close friend of Kano and corresponded with him regularly. In 1936, he earned a black belt in Judo, and later gained his 2nd degree black belt in 1938. He was a co-founding member of the Ju-Jitsu Club de France, one of the oldest Judo clubs in Europe, which still exists today.

Kapap was developed in Mandatory Palestine by a group of instructors during the 1930’s and 1940’s, where the main body of it was organized and taught. Kapap and Krav Maga remained one and the same until at least 1958.

Krav Maga as a term appeared for the first time in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) in 1965, but in the IDF dictionary of 1965 it was not defined yet and Only  KAPAP – Krav Panim El Panim ( Mean Face t Face combat ) define Hand-to-Hand Combat , use hands knifes rifles guns and Bayonets and any weapons use in face to face combat ( Be transalte as CQB – close quarter Battle )

Krav Maga and Kapap are terms used interchangeably for the same body( as CQB and CQC – Close quarter Combat ) but not always the same knowledge (techniques and drills) in the IDF for the entire decade between 1948-1958.

The hand-to-hand combat curriculum was adopted for the most part from that which was practiced in the Palmach.

Although the term Kapap first appeared in 1940, many of its contents were processed in the 30’s in the ‘operating companies,’ especially in boxing and jujutsu. The short stick fighting method was developed by Moshele Horowitz RIP in the framework of the ‘immigrant camps.’

Key figures in the development of Israeli Martial Arts:

Gershon Kopler

Yitzhak Stiebel

Heinrich Cohen

Emanuel Gil

Kurt Benjamin

Menase Harel

Moshele Horowitz

Yehuda Marcus

Joshua Globerman

Akiva Atzmon

Amos Golani

Musa Finkel

Raphael Atlas

Amnon Yona

Jacob Solomon

Avraham Adan

Micha Perry

Uzi Nemirovsky

Paul Beaver

Imi Lichtenfeld

Giora Shanan

Iftah Zaid

David Levy

In 2000, after no one had used the term KAPAP since the 60th anymore inside or outside of Israel, Avi Nardia established a new self-defense program for the Yamam, Israel’s top Counter-Terrorism unit as the unit’s official instructor and as the unit recruited him to setup a new hand-to-hand combatives program. Avi made the decision to respect the memory of all instructors that were not mentioned before.

He built the KAPAP Federation (IKF ) in 2001 and started to spread the system outside of Israel and later from ONLY one school around Glob today is the most Israeli martial arts known and all over from Japan Thailand Singapore Indonesia and from Asia to Most Europe and Canada and start in be popular at the USA.

Kapap has many respectable beliefs and solid values:

We teach proven techniques, each thoroughly tested and vetted.

We dress according to the mission – gi, or street-clothes.

We have higher standards and higher values and bullies are not amongst our ranks.

We are a ‘normal’ driving school, we’re not a formula one school. Me teach self defense  to Normal civilians and not Ninja

We develop confidence and skill sets, not professional fighters.

We teach by love and peace and friendship and not by fear and bully students as ” Dont be victim ” or by ” we do bad things to bad people ” thats NOT our motto we not teach our students to ego and to be evil or Tacticool or to missed understand self defense and use it as ego – we teach with humble attitude and not “with touch  me and your first class is free” thats wrong attitude

Ours is a school where you can send your wife, your children, to study.

We share knowledge freely.

We teach traditional and modern martial arts.

Kapap is a well-thought-out and researched blend of styles.

We have a ranking system suited for civilians.

We teach respect and discipline.

We use anything that can help us grow into a system.

We analyze all components included. It’s what we do.

We offer videos, but they are not meant to replace actual training or teachers.

We believe that our teachers must know their students and be legit for teach thats why we not sale certificates and demand them to work their way and earn belts and the honor and privilege to teach and lead students , we not try grow the organization more than we can handle in best way to our students need and we demand teaching quality and teaching standard and once not stand for it we are not allowed to teach.

Our teachers must gauge the efficacy of what is taught to their students.

We are a family. We grow together.

In too many training facilities, students are injured by over-enthusiastic instructors that let their egos dictate the lesson plan, often ending up in an emergency room, because as trainers, they were not following good training standards.

Others sell their systems using good and/or bad marketing, depending on your point of view. It’s good marketing, as it relies heavily on people’s fear, and lack of education. There is a market for that. It also preys on their wish to be more than ‘wimps.’ Traditionally, this tactic has worked for years, but that does not make it right, nor good. This marketing tactic ensures income, but at the expense of the students, and in many cases the instructors.

So, why all of the ego, and testosterone? Why the need to sell yourself based on a movie character? Anyone can call themselves an ‘expert’ these days and through effective marketing, they will put many students at risk. Far too many students are paying the price for this dubious marketing trend. In martial arts, all study should start with a good attitude. We must teach the proper attitude and the proper safety. It is our duty as instructors and educators. We teach martial arts. We are martial artists first and

last. With education in traditional martial arts, we wish to make it more ‘real’ to our students. We don’t require military fatigues and helmets to prove our methods and techniques work.

A true teacher is always a student and his attitude must be “always a student, sometimes a teacher,“ and it needs to remain so. As you pick your teacher avoid anyone who represents himself as a grandmaster, for in combat, no-one is a grandmaster.

Kapap is more about teaching people how to live a quality lifestyle and not to live fearing people.

We are not a ‘normal’ Martial Arts training program, because we provide more tools for our students including training in tactical driving, swimming and free-diving and cold weather survival – all components that make Kapap a Modern Martial art.

The KAPAP Gideon Test

Trusting people is the only way to know if you can’t trust them. Our Gideon Test is more of a self-test. Depending upon the person, successful completion of the KAPAP instructor program is either very easy, or else completely impossible.

With enough time and effort, virtually anyone can gain the technical and tactical skills to become a KAPAP instructor. However, the biggest test in KAPAP is to demonstrate integrity – an attribute which candidates either embody completely, or not at all. Those who only seek to collect ego certificates will find our KAPAP program impossible. Thus, we use the Gideon test to distinguish our team members.

At Avi Nardia Academy (ANA) we constantly work to distinguish our Gideon Fighters/Instructors. In order to find those who will lead KAPAP into the future we actively weed out others who only chase certificates and titles but fail to behave like professionals. This constant process ensures that our team maintains the highest standards.

As the founder of KAPAP combatives I lead KAPAP worldwide with a family model. I am very pleased to attract so many good quality members and representatives. Today, 20 years since I first began teaching KAPAP to the public, I am proud to see KAPAP spreading its wings and beginning to soar very high with new members around the world joining my team each day.

I have devoted my life to Martial Arts and hold Black Belts in many different Martial Arts and I continue to explore more and more.

There are not more than five principles in modern Kapap (push and pull, balance displacement, high and low, relative position, two points of contact) yet combinations of them produce more techinques than can ever been seen!

Martial Arts are about love and peace, and being yourself, free of ego, smiling more and enjoying life, as life is Martial Art.

“Keeping an open mind is the most skill I own.” Hanshi Patrick McCarthy

“It is better to be a student of reality, than a master of illusion.”

Avi Nardia

“It’s not the size of your stones, it’s what you build with them.”

Tim Boehlert

Lady death

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Kapap Krav Maga, contemporary but yet fully based in traditional martial arts as part of a Self Defense Education has a Fire arm training or how we like to call it a Gun Jutsu – the way of a Gun. Shooting is and extension of a traditional swordsmanship and it is a Martial art as same as a hooting range is a Dojo. Like in old traditional martial arts settings open filed is the best environment for the classes. Here we can draw a parallel and say that a good shooting rage is the one, which provides a great variety of possibilities for the training, and it is not limited in space and movements. The best example is a combative training. In order to build situational awareness a proper facility/shooting range must come with as many obstacles as possible in the filed, from changing positions to high risks entries like kill house games, cover and concealed, bad vision, low light, shooting from cars and so on.  Only and open door shooting range can provide all of those requirements. Indoor shooting range is good to keep and maintain skills during the wintertime but even than my recommendation is to take advantage of all four seasons and train outdoors even if it is snowing.

Firearm has always been a better half of Kapap Krav Maga IJJ. Whilst Jiujutsu and hand-to-hand make one half, shooting and gun skills make the other. Shooting also comes with extra skills requirements in the filed like rappelling, water training, survival, hike and so on. 

With more than 40 years in the security and martial arts field it makes me proud to see more women taking part in the hand-to-hand program as well as in the firearm and field program.

The role of women in 21stcentury is comes with a new understanding of gender studies and learning from the history of many powerful and inspiring women that have shaped the destiny of this planet. We can see that in the ancient times the role of a women has differed from culture to culture and while the role of a warrior has been predominantly associated with a male figures there have been historically important women who were actively participating in different warfare’s and battles. They were not only a behind the scene characters dwelling in palaces and chambers as mothers, queens, lovers or old wise women. 

Great amount of my understanding of Martial Arts comes from the Far East and learning to know that female warriors are one of the greatest untold narratives in the samurai history. But over a span of couple of centuries female samurai warriors were found on battlefields fighting besides men with fierce and bravery. Female samurai warriors were highly trained in the martial arts. They were taught to use sword, the naginata and the bow and arrow mostly to protect themselves so we can say that this was part of self defense and primarily defensive in nature. 

What set Tomoe Gozen as a fearsome 12thcentury Japanese female warrior apart from her fellow warrior women that instead of defensive she was offensive. She became an icon due to her fierce determination as a warrior. Tomoe has disappeared from history and her fate has been speculated by many generations to come. 

Lets move to some recent history and to Lyudmila Pavlichenko that many people do not know her name. She was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during the Second World War; credited with more than 300 confirmed kills what makes he one of the most successful sniper in recorded history. For example, officer Chris Kyle, US Navy Seal, who served during the war in Iraq, was the most lethal sniper shooter in US military history credited with over 160 kills officially. 

Lydmila Pavlichenko started her sniper carier at the age of ten when she joined a shooting club not being able to tolerate braging of a neighbor’s son how good shooter he was. She said that she joined the shooting club to show that girl could do as well as him. Later on she has earned a sobriquet “Lady Death” for a good reason. In her speech in United States she said that she was 25 years old and killed 309 fascist ocupant and than reportedly told “Don’t you think, gentlemn, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”

Women are more and more encouraged to take part in different combat programs. One of the examples is Israeli Army who has always supported women as fighters and had them as part of the team from Navy Seal, YAMAM to Pilot program and in many different units.  There are many women in Avi Nardia Academy in KAPAP Krav Maga training and other martial arts programs as well. What we can see is that lately more women take part in the shooting program as part of their self-defense classes but many of them take it as a sport and become excelent shooters and competitors. Lydmila Pavlichenco would have been definitely proud of them as same as many other strong female characters who were writing new pages in history. Women empowerment comes in different shapes and what we do is to provide right tools and safe space for women to feel empowered and tackle every day life with confidence and awarenes. 

Women narrative is changing and learning from history we can find a value in the way martial arts and self-defense provides recognition of the complexities of what it means to be a woman and illuminate our understanding of women in contemporary afairs.