Local law enforcement participate in Krav Maga weapon-disarming seminar
Area law enforcement got an opportunity to try something new this past Sunday at Kí Martial Arts on Marbledale Road in Tuckahoe.

For three hours in the afternoon, police and corrections officers from the area took to the floor mat to learn what “Krav Maga,” the martial art developed for and used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), could teach them about disarming opponents in close combat.

Visiting instructor Master Rhon Mizrachi, an Israeli citizen who began his Krav Maga training in the late 1960s and spent years as a member of the IDF, demonstrated and deconstructed gun disarmament scenarios from several angles over the course of the seminar, always emphasizing the first priority – to remove oneself from the line of fire.

“If you’re not clearing your head,” Mizrachi reminded the six pairs of participants early in the seminar, “you’re not going to do it [the technique] with a 9 mm bullet in your head.”

Beginning with a defense to a gun pointed at their foreheads, Mizrachi taught his students to respond with a motion combining a crouch, upward thrust and kick to the groin, in which the gun is wrenched from the possession of the aggressor.

Mizrachi, with the help of Kí Martial Arts owner Sensei Vladimir Zolottev, demonstrated several variations on the original position, displaying defenses to guns aimed at either side, the back, or squarely in the chest.

Taken in slow motion, the steps of each Krav Maga technique seemed fairly rudimentary, but when practiced by Mizrachi or Zolottev in a single, fluid movement, the art achieved an indisputable intensity.

This intensity was exhibited not only in Mizrachi’s physical demonstrations but also in his words. During a hiatus in the training, Mizrachi shared his understanding of what Krav Maga is.

“Krav Maga doesn’t teach people to fight,” he said. “It teaches them to conduct war on a personal level.”

In attendance at Sunday’s seminar were representatives from each of the three town beats – Anthony Cerasi from Eastchester, Chris Santiago from Tuckahoe and Nick Deyoung from Bronxville – as well as Mt. Vernon Chief of Police Barbara Duncan and her daughter Carissa Duncan. A court officer and officers from the New York City Department of Corrections also came to learn the defense techniques.

Cerasi, who is a defensive tactics instructor within the Eastchester Police Department, said that he was focused on finding the aspects of the seminar that would translate back to the rest of the department.

“You come to these classes,” he said, “you take what you can bring back to your guys.”

However, he said that the most important aspect of police work is always functioning as a team, seeking to reduce the chance that a one-on-one encounter with an aggressor would ever arise. “Bottom line is you want to never take on anybody without other cops there.”

At the seminar’s end, Chris Santiago, who is currently in the process of obtaining certification to teach defensive tactics to his colleagues in the Tuckahoe force, expressed his enthusiasm for the art of Krav Maga.

“It’s close-quarters combat,” he said, “and most of our encounters are face-to-face.”

Santiago also stated that he would be glad to have the Krav Maga tactics in his defensive arsenal. “Most of my encounters I’ve diffused verbally, luckily,” he said. “But now if the situation does arise, I have those tools to use.”

Zolottev is a long-time practitioner and teacher of karate, tae kwon do and other martial arts, as well as a member, since 1992, of the National Karate Team of Romania. It was only two years ago that he began training in Krav Maga, a martial art that he considers unique.

“I haven’t found an art that is more specific and better-designed for threats in a street environment,” said Zolottev.

Krav Maga, Hebrew for “contact combat,” was developed by a man named Imi Lichtenfeld who grew up in pre-World War II Eastern Europe and eventually migrated to what would become the modern state of Israel.

According to the Krav Maga Federation website, Lichtenfeld quickly became a face-to-face combat instructor within the Haganah, a pre-Israel paramilitary group.

Lichtenfeld joined the Israeli Defense Forces shortly after the founding of the modern nation of Israel and served in the IDF for 15 years, refining his combat techniques, which eventually became known collectively as Krav Maga, throughout his term of service.

Grandmaster Haim Zut, 71, presently the highest-ranking Krav Maga instructor in the world, was trained by Lichtenfeld beginning during his own IDF service. Zut went on to train Mizrachi, from the time he was a small child.

Mizrachi is currently considered to be the top-ranking practitioner of Krav Maga in the United States.