Prior to 1948 the modern state of Israel did not exist. The last time the world heard anything about Israel was in 70 A.D. when Roman legions under General Titus brutally squashed a Jewish revolt, dispersed the majority of the population throughout the Roman Empire, and vengefully renamed the nation to Palestine (the Latin word for Israel’s ancient enemy Philistine), which is today the Gaza strip and Tel-Aviv area.

Although there has always been a remnant of Jews living in the Holy Land, for the past 1,932 years they have been under constant subjugation by foreign powers such as the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Crusaders, again the Arabs, and the Ottomans (also known as the Turks). The Ottoman Empire (1300–1918) ruled over both the indigenous Jews and Arabs in the region until their defeat in World War I (1914–1918) and the implementation of the British Mandate of 1919. In this same year the Jews formed an underground army, known as the Haganah הגנה (the Hebrew word for defence), to deal with the ongoing conflict with Arab gangs and in anticipation of the creation of a Jewish state promised to them by the British in the Balfour Declaration.Yet, despite the popularity of the Zionist movement and increased Jewish immigration, Statehood was slow in the making. Instead, the colonial powers allowed the local police to form an elite unit called the Notrim (guards) to defend isolated Jewish agricultural settlements against marauding Arabs, and to quell ongoing racial riots steadily growing in the urban centres. Although the Notrim was successful at protecting the small outposts, they were not as effective in handling the deadly riots or pursuing the enemy back behind his own lines. It was a Haganah officer named Yitzhak Sadeh (considered the father of the Israeli Special Forces) that understood these shortcomings and formed a new army unit called the Nodedot (wanderers).When World War II (1939–1945) brought British forces once again into global conflict against the axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy, the need for oil was paramount. However, this rare commodity was threatened by German troops advancing eastward into North Africa and many Arab tribes openly siding with the Nazis. Reluctant at first, the British turned once again to Jewish fighters and formed the first official Israeli Special Forces unit on May 14, 1941, known as the Pal’ mach פלמ"ח (a Hebrew acronym for Plugot Machatz, פלוגות מחץ which means strike platoon). Although the original numbers of personnel sanctioned for Pal’ mach training under British supervision was only suppose to be 1,000 fighters, the Haganah decided to overstep their bounds and trained roughly 3000 men in preparation for a future Jewish army to be used after the war.The training that the Pal’ mach commandos received was called Kapap קפ"פ (the Hebrew acronym for Krav Panim El’Panim, קרב פנים אל פנים which means “face-to-face combat”). The word “Krav” קרב is also translated commonly as “fight.” However, Kapap was not just one system, but a mixture of rigorous physical conditioning, firearms, explosives training, radio communications, wilderness survival training, combat first aid and foreign language courses (which also included the enemy languages of German and Arabic). This style of empty hand combat training was a combination of Western fighting systems such as boxing (London Prize Ring Rules), Greco-Roman wrestling, and standard British military knife and baton training. At this time, since there was no one single vocabulary word or term used to identify these types of self-defence techniques; Kapap was used as an all inclusive term. Eventually, the Pal’ mach’s three combat brigades that were trained in Kapap went onto assist the British in a variety of victorious campaigns such as the invasions of Vichy (the French pro-Nazi government), Lebanon, and Syria; espionage missions in Jordan and fighting along side the British SAS (Special Air Service) in the Balkans.When the war ended, so did the Jewish-British cooperation. The Jews expected the Brits to hold up their end of the bargain for a homeland. When it was apparent that the deal would not go through the Pal’ mach used guerrilla tactics against the British military and police installations. Terrorist attacks were also carried out by the Jewish Stern Group and Irgun, but they were strongly condemned by the Haganah.With the newly formed United Nations in 1945 the Jews knew that it was only a matter of time before an all out war between the Jews and Arabs would break out. In an attempt to intervene, prior to their departure, the British tried to partition the region into two parts – a Jewish state on the west side of the Jordan River and an Arab state on the east side of the river (today’s Jordan).Finally, when the British lowered the Union Jack and left the region, the Jews declared their Independence on May 14, 1948. Hours later the forces of Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinians attacked the newborn nation of Israel. Eventually, the unofficial-turned-legitimate Haganah would face its greatest challenge yet in the War of Independence, and was officially renamed the Tzava Haganah Le’Yisrael צבא הגנה לישראל (translated as the Army Defence to Israel and also the Israeli Defence Forces or IDF צה"ל).

It was during the War of Independence that the Israelis managed to not only survive, though greatly outnumbered and poorly equipped, but went on to form one of the most respected Militaries in the world. In 1957, the ultra-secret unit named Sayeret Mat’kal (Unit 216) was formed by intelligence officer Avraham Aran who closely modelled it after the British SAS. In the 1970’s this unit gained worldwide fame after a series of spectacular counterterrorist operations - the most famous of which was Operation Thunderbolt on July 3-4, 1976 (also known in the U.S. as the Raid on Entebbe), where operators flew into the hostile African nation of Uganda and rescued 103 hostages who had been Hijacked by German and Palestinian terrorists.In the 1970’s, as it pertained to the IDF, the Special Forces units had a monopoly on martial arts training and, once again, Kapap became the training of choice, which was also known as Lochama Zehira לוחמה זעירה (“micro fighting” or “micro combat”). The system included a variety of military skills in addition to hand-to-hand combat. However, with Israel being at war with one or more Arab neighbours, and facing unrelenting cross-border terrorist attacks, it was obvious that regular IDF units needed some sort of hand-to-hand fighting system. As a result, what they got was a basic, no-nonsense, system called Kapap or Krav Panim el Panim.