KAPAP — The Pre-State Combat System That Shaped Krav Maga
The Israeli Defense Forces close-combat program that ran alongside Krav Maga from the 1940s through today — a parallel lineage often confused with it.
KAPAP — Krav Panim el Panim, "face-to-face combat" — is not a synonym for Krav Maga, even though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. KAPAP is an older Israeli close-combat program that predates Krav Maga's adoption by the IDF in 1948 and continues to develop independently today.
Origins
KAPAP grew out of the pre-state Jewish paramilitary organizations — the Haganah and Palmach — in the late 1930s and 1940s. It originally combined boxing, wrestling, judo, fencing, stick fighting, and knife work into a single applied curriculum for fighters. Imi Lichtenfeld's early IDF Krav Maga teaching was, in part, a refinement of the KAPAP material; some of his peers continued teaching KAPAP under that name.
How KAPAP differs from Krav Maga today
- Weapons emphasis: KAPAP retains a strong stick-fighting and edged-weapons component that civilian Krav Maga has largely deprioritized.
- Military focus: modern KAPAP is taught primarily to military and law-enforcement clients rather than civilians.
- System boundaries: KAPAP openly incorporates BJJ, Muay Thai, and Filipino martial arts — explicitly cross-trained — where civilian Krav Maga federations are more curriculum-disciplined.
- Lineage: KAPAP doesn't have a single Imi-equivalent founder; it has a more diffuse line of senior instructors.
The KAPAP federation today
The modern KAPAP Federation, led by senior Israeli instructors including Avi Nardia, runs courses for special-operations and counter-terror units in multiple countries. It is sometimes encountered by civilian students who attend KAPAP seminars as cross-training to their primary Krav Maga curriculum — particularly for the weapons material.
What students should know
When a school markets "Krav Maga / KAPAP" together, it usually means the head instructor has cross-certified in both. The civilian Krav Maga curriculum at such a school is unlikely to differ materially from any other federation. The KAPAP layer is typically a separate stream of weapons or military scenarios for advanced students.