Krav-Maga was created and developed by Imi Sde-or (Lichtenfeld), Israeli Grand-master (1910-1998) who started KM in the late 1940′s whilst serving as Chief Instructor for hand to hand combat and combat fitness training for the Israeli Defense Forces. Imi, as a young man growing up in Bratislava, Slovakia, was a champion boxer, a top-level wrestler, and an expert in judo and jujitsu. Imi’s father was a police officer in-charge of the detectives in Bratislava who taught his detectives (and Imi) police defensive tactics.
Imi took part in numerous street fights defending the Jewish quarter against local fascists and Nazis before and during the first phase of World War II. After two years of travel, Imi immigrated to Palestine (1942), which became Israel in 1948. Due to the political situation, Israel was immediately at war with its neighbours and did not have the luxury of a six-month boot camp for its young soldiers, who were literally conscripted and sent to fight. Due to this, the Israeli military needed an effective hand to hand combat system that could be learned very quickly, was easy to retain and was very effective. Beginning with Israeli special forces units like the Haganah, Palmack, and Palyam Krav Maga became the official fighting system for all military personnel, Israeli police and security forces. Since then it has been studied, tested, improved and developed extensively.
The need for the IKMF originally arose in the early 1990′s, when the teaching of Krav Maga (KM) was starting to spread beyond the borders of Israel. Imi (the founder of Krav Maga) asked Eyal Yanilov, his closest assistant, and the chief instructor Krav-Maga, to assist him in forming a new international KM federation.
From its formation in 1996, the IKMF has grown to be the largest and most professional KM organization in the world. The IKMF now successfully operates in Israel, most EU countries, ex-communist countries (such as Poland, Russia and Hungary), Australia, North America, South-east Asia and the Far-East.
The IKMF trains and educates civilian students and instructors (with KM and/or other martial arts background), law-enforcement officers and instructors, military personnel and instructors, as well as security and close protection officers and their instructors. All such individuals are accepted into the ranks of the IKMF. It has since been refined for both civilian and military applications. Unlike most martial arts, Krav Maga is essentially a tactical defense skill. Its philosophy emphasizes threat neutralization, simultaneous defensive and offensive maneuvers, and aggressive endurance in a ‘him-or-me’ context. Krav Maga is still used by the Israel Defense Forces and several closely related variations have been developed and adopted by law enforcement, Mossad, FBI, United States special operations forces, Irish and British Special Forces and Hollywood Stars.
The International Krav Maga Federation (IKMF) managed to hold the initial surge of interest in Krav Maga created by Avi’s committed, near constant travelling and creating awareness of the system all over the world. The aim of International Krav Maga Federation is to provide continuous education of new instructors, government agencies, and special operation teams all over the world.
Assisting Avi are the ‘Global International Team’ (GIT) comprising of specially selected, top level instructors with vast experience of teaching Krav Maga all over the world. The team is responsible for training civilian instructors, testing high level and expert grades, as well as teaching Defensive Tactics, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Self-Defence and Fighting Skills – to all sectors of the Military and Law-Enforcement, VIP protection, SWAT and Intervention Teams, Anti-Terrorist Units, Air Marshals and Security Personnel. The GIT provide on-going and in-service programs, establishment and control of training systems for the above units and qualification of their in-house instructors.
