HEAD OF THE KRAV MAGA FEDERATION
“ The difference between how I do the technique and how you do it is my attitude. I turn my attacker into the victim immediately. ” – Rhon Mizrachi
Rhon Mizrachi is a student of Krav Maga founder Imi Lichtenfeld and Grandmaster Haim Zut ; he is a Guardian of Krav Maga.
He is a fighter, teacher, mentor and martial artist.
Rhon lives by the code of a martial artist. While Krav Maga is the vessel that Rhon uses because of his skill and expertise, it is in fact helping people grow and change that he feels is the responsibility of a teacher.
His goal is to have students who are ultimately better Krav Maga practitioners than he, and believes that this should be the aspiration of any true teacher.
Rhon’s teaching and fighting style make him, his instructors, and his students unique as practitioners.
“ If your punches don’t cause damage you have a problem. How can you take away a knife, they’ll just take it back. “ – Rhon Mizrachi
Throughout his life, Rhon has chosen to enhance his skills as a Krav Maga practitioner through continued training.
He has extensively trained in other styles (Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, boxing ) believing that training in and respecting other arts is part of what it means to be a martial artist.
In 1990 Rhon established the first school in the United States with the blessing of Krav Maga founder Imi Lichtenfeld.
GRANDMASTER HAIM ZUT
GRANDMASTER HAIM ZUT
HAIM ZUT
Haim Zut was born in April of 1935 to parents of Latvian origin.
In 1952, at the age of 18, Haim began his military service. It was here that he first met Imi Sde’Or, the Chief Instructor of Krav Maga for the Israeli Defense Forces. Haim was immediately devoted to Krav Maga, and it was through this devotion that he developed his skills. When he was released from the military in 1955, he had already attained advanced fighting ability.
In 1956, Haim returned to the IDF as a reserve soldier, taking part in the Sinai Campaign, a war which involved the joint operation of Israel, France, and Great Britain against Egypt. Following his release from the military, Haim returned to Pardes-Hana, where he worked teaching underprivileged youth agricultural skills. During this time he remained in regular contact with Imi, who continued to serve in the IDF.
GRANDMASTER HAIM ZUT
At the end of 1963, Imi was released from his own military service. Imi was preparing to give the first civilian instructor course in Krav Maga, and he invited Haim to take part. Haim agreed, and a life long mentorship was born.
Haim was one of four students to attend the original instructor course, and following its completion he became Imi’s top student. He received his license to teach martial arts from the Wingate Institute in 1963, and began teaching classes.
Haim’s first class was in offered in Hadera, and from that point on he would train students in Hadera, Pardes-Hana, and Gan Shemu’el. During the early years, Haim donated his time to the rehabilitation of gang members through the study of martial arts.
As Imi’s student, Haim would also become a co-founder of both the Federation for Krav Maga and Self-Defense, and the Israeli Krav Maga Association.
GRANDMASTER HAIM ZUT
Haim continued to gain proficiency, not only by advancing in ranks but also by studying for additional teaching licenses from the Wingate Institute.
In 1969, Haim was the first Krav Maga instructor ever to attain a secondary license with a higher degree of superiority from the Israeli government. In 1980, Haim took part in an even higher instructor licensing course-he is one of only a few martial arts instructors, and the only Krav Maga instructor, to have the honor of having completed that course.
Over the years he would amass an extensive knowledge of martial arts instruction, eventually finishing a course at the Wingate Institute for certification as a martial arts coach, the equivalent of an Olympic-level trainer.
GRANDMASTER HAIM ZUT
In 1993, Haim left the Israeli Krav Maga Association to create the Association of Krav Maga International-Kapap.
He had become frustrated by the internal politics of the organization, and with the blessing of his longtime mentor and friend, Imi Sde’Or, he decided to distance himself from the infighting in order to focus on training his students.
In 2003, the leading coaches and masters of fighting arts in Israel decided to honor Haim with the rank of Dan 10 because of his contribution and work within the community of martial arts in Israel and in Krav Maga specifically. At the same time, he was inducted into the martial arts Hall of Fame and, in 2006, he was given the title of Grandmaster in recognition of over forty years of teaching.
Not only was he a Krav Maga Grandmaster, he was also an educator who serves as a model for his students, focusing with special care on those underprivileged children to whom he devoted his time.
Haim passed away at the age of 85 on May 12, 2020.
KRAV MAGA FOUNDER
FOUNDER IMI LICHTENFELD
IMI LICHTENFELD
The concept of Krav Maga was formed in the streets of Eastern Europe and developed in the struggle for the creation of the nation of Israel
Imrich “Imi” Lichtenfeld was born in 1910 in Hungary and raised in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. Imi’s father, Samuel Lichtenfeld, was a former chief detective who owned the first modern gym in Bratislava, where he was active in wrestling, boxing, and weight lifting.
Samuel had been an excellent wrestler in his day, and he encouraged Imi to participate in an assortment of athletic activities, including gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing.
As a young man, Imi won numerous championships in a variety of sporting events, achieving exceptional accomplishment in boxing and wrestling. Between the years of 1929 and 1939, Imi was one of Europe’s most successful wrestlers.
During the late 1930s Jews were trying to stay alive as fascism swept across Europe.
In 1936, months after Germany adopted the infamous Nuremburg Laws (which declared Jews to be inferior and not entitled to the protections afforded non-Jewish, German citizens), attacks against Jews began to be commonplace in the streets of many Eastern European cities.
Imi and other young Jewish men engaged in numerous altercations with anti-Semites in the Bratislavan population in an attempt to protect the Jewish community from individual attacks and to prevent pogroms in the Jewish Quarter.
VOYAGE TO ISRAEL
By the 1940s, Jews across Europe were lining up by the thousands in a final attempt to flee Nazi persecution. Few were able to obtain the appropriate documentation and authorization to do so.
In April 1940 Imi left Bratislava, embarking on a journey that would almost take his life. He was able to book passage on a ship, the Pentcho, which was one of the final ships to leave Europe carrying Jewish passengers.
The ship had a stated destination of Paraguay and its passengers had Paraguayan visas, but it was actually headed for Israel and ha’pala or aliyah bet (illegal entry into British Palestine).
The Pentcho was an ancient riverboat, barely capable of staying afloat. During the voyage, Romanian authorities denied it entry into local waters. Despite the refusal and the Pentcho’s lack of fuel, the ship was able to enter Romanian and Bulgarian waters, while being shot at to prevent the ship from mooring. Amazingly, the Pentcho was able to make it into the Aegean Sea before a boiler on the boat exploded, destroying the ship and shipwrecking the passengers and crew on an island in the Dodecanese chain. The voyage that had been slated to take one month turned into a tragic journey for many of the Pentcho’s 500 passengers.
The majority of the people on board were eventually interned at the Italian concentration camp Ferramonti.
IMI LICHTENFELD
When the Pentcho was shipwrecked, Imi and 4 others began a voyage in a row boat in the Aegean Sea, ultimately being picked up by a British ship whose destination was Alexandria, Egypt.
There, Imi spent weeks in the hospital healing from his severe ear infection. Once recovered, he joined the Czech Legion (which was subordinate to the British military in the region). Imi travelled through Egypt, Libya, and Syria, seeing combat primarily in Libya against German soldiers.
When he was discharged, he received permission to enter what was then known as the British Mandate for Palestine: modern-day Israel.
At Imi’s passing on January 8 1998, Grandmaster Imi Lichtenfeld was recognized as a hero of the Israeli people.
Imi reached Israel in 1942. Under the British mandate, Jews were restricted from carrying weapons and were generally left unprotected from attacks.
Because of this they relied on the Haganah (The Defense) , Pal’mach (a British-authorized special forces unit) and the Palyam (a unit specializing in seaborne and underwater operations) to provide security. Yitzhak Sadeh, the head of the Haganah, recruited Imi as an instructor because of his widely respected fighting skills. In 1944, Imi began to teach specialized physical fitness which included swimming, wrestling and weapons defenses against knives, sticks and guns.
Between 1942 and 1948, Imi supervised the training of the special units of the Haganah, Pal’mach, Palyam, and of the police forces. This training was called Kapap – an acronym for Krav Panim L’panim: face-to-face combat.
Ultimately, the fighting style would be renamed Krav Maga.
