Israeli self-defence program comes to Toronto
A former Bathurst Jewish Community Centre martial arts instructor (Moni Aizik) have developed Commando Krav Maga, or CKM, a practical hand-to-hand self-defence system that’s based on Krav Maga, the Israeli military’s self-defence system.
He and one of his former students have gone on to popularize CKM. It’s the “most in-demand defence system worldwide,” said Ilan Rosenberg. (Highest Level Elite Instructor In the world)
CKM cuts out self-defence techniques that are too complex to be carried out in real-life situations, and a combatant’s size and weight is irrelevant, he said.
Rosenberg enrolled in judo and jujitsu classes at the Bathurst JCC (now the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre) in 1978, at the age of 12. His teacher was Moni Aizik, a then recent immigrant from Israel.
Rosenberg, now 48, trained with Aizik for more than a decade and won Ontario judo championships in 1993. “It was after that that Moni asked me to teach at his school,” Rosenberg said.
That’s when he began learning CKM from Aizik, who had developed the self-defence system over 20 years.
Rosenberg said that Aizik fought in an Israeli special forces unit of 60 soldiers during the Yom Kippur War. Aizik’s unit was ambushed by hundreds of Syrian commandos, who were larger than most Arab fighters. Only five Israelis, among them Aizik, survived. He was aware that he lived through the battle because of his large size, Rosenberg said.
“Moni realized that the Israeli martial arts system needed to be changed,” Rosenberg said. The Israeli military agreed and asked Aizik to “evolve” its close-quarter combat system.
Rosenberg persuaded Aizik to take his system, a simplified version of Krav Maga in which a fighter’s success isn’t related to weight or size, around the world. In 2004, it was given the name Commando Krav Maga.
Currently, some 800 CKM instructors, male and female, are active worldwide, in the United States, China, Japan, Italy, Greece, Chile and other countries. Rosenberg offers instructor training in Canada through the Canadian Commando Krav Maga Academy.
He teaches traditional martial arts at his Rosenberg Centre for Defensive Sciences (www.rosenbergcentre.org) in Newmarket, Ont., and holds self-defence classes for children, but CKM is strictly for men and women who are over 15, he said.
Students have to be mature, because unlike traditional martial arts, CKM has no rules. “We go for the eyes, throat, groin. We use techniques that can do serious damage,” he said. “We can break legs and arms.”
However, summarizing CKM’s philosophy, he added, “We look for peace while preparing for war.”
Rosenberg said in cases where a fight is unavoidable, CKM students are instructed to “engage, cause maximum damage and disengage. Don’t punish – they can pull out a weapon.”
He said he loves traditional martial arts, but they are “sports. I realized they aren’t right for street fighting with guns and knives. Today, there are multiple attackers and many of them are carrying weapons.”
Rosenberg, the highest level CKM instructor in the world today works with Moni to train the Canadian Forces’ Joint Task Force 2, a special operations unit responsible for counterterrorism, to provide soldiers with training.
“Their hand-to-hand combat needed to be upgraded,” he said. “The group is extremely athletic and focused. They picked it up quickly.”
Along with teaching, Rosenberg has worked in dozens of movies as a Fight Coordinator and stuntman, including Red, Still Seas, Nakita, Covert Affairs, Robocop and just finished a new great action series called KILLJOYS which will be all CKM fights
Rosenberg has now opened CKM North across the Yorkdale Mall at Gyros Gymnastics 73 Samor Rd. A “civilian version” for the Jewish community, he said. He mentioned the recent murders in Kansas City, and now in Jerusalem “It’s a very anti-Semitic world,” he said, “and we have to be able to defend ourselves.”