Israel, Hamas, And National Security In The Middle East | Ron Grobman | One American Podcast #8
Chase Geiser is joined by Ron Grobman. Ron is a former IDF soldier and owner of Tactical Fitness (TacticalFitnessAustin.com).
For Ron Grobman, Krav Maga is not a job — it is a way of life. At the age of 16, Ron became the youngest certified Krav Maga instructor in the United States through Krav Maga Worldwide. He has since attained the rank of 1st sergeant in the Israeli military, served in the IDF Special Forces reconnaissance battalion as a sniper, been certified through International Krav Maga under Gabi Noah, and gained Krav Maga Trainer certification from the Wingate Institute in Israel.
Ron was able to accomplish his goals though working with civilians, law enforcement agencies, and military personnel as a Krav Maga instructor. Ron’s passion for teaching is evident in every session, and he has the unique ability to tailor his lessons to the individual needs and goals of his students. In this way, he connects with every student on a personal level and ensures their continued success. Come train with Ron and let him put his experience, enthusiasm, and passion to work for you.
EPISODE LINKS:
Ron's Website: https://www.tacticalfitnessaustin.com/
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
So for me, it was a little bit more of a unique situation.
I was what's called a lone soldier.
So if you don't have family in Israel or you are for whatever reason not in contact with your biological family, we're talking about parents, not grandparents, so it has to be parents.
You're in a status called being a lone soldier.
So you get extra financial support, you get support with housing, you get a little bit more time off to take care of errands.
Because in Israel, you get paid a minuscule salary as a soldier.
So it's expected that your parents are kind of going to take care of you, do your laundry, help you with errands, help you with...
So they were actually buying lands off of people there.
But basically the Arabs that already lived there were either Arabs, they were part of Lebanon, part of Syria, part of Jordan, part of Egypt, and so on and so forth.
Because as an American, when I hear the word settlement, I just think like pilgrims and like they just came over here and were like, hey, we're going to hang out and it's like five acres.
I mean, look, people want to talk shit about the settlements that are in occupied lands, but first of all, they employ a lot of the local population.
A lot.
And they pay them Israeli minimum wage or higher, which is a lot, which is usually double what they would get paid in their little villages or wherever doing with benefits and so on and so forth.
So that's first and foremost.
But anyways, Israel pulls out a year or two later.
I mean, they're both terrorist organizations, as far as I'm concerned.
The Palestinian Authority pays families of terrorists that have been killed by Israel, people that are held in jail in Israel because they're terrorists, $1,000 a month.
At that point, I was in New York City or Michigan.
I was like ready to buy my plane ticket to go back, but they don't typically call you back to reserve after about a year, year and a half of being out.
So that operation, same thing, lots of Air Force doing work and then infantry offensive.
That was somewhat of a debacle on the IDF side.
They were using M113 personnel carriers, which are not designed to take impact from, they're barely designed to take impact from rifle rounds.
Very old.
You've probably seen them like in Vietnam era movies, like armored personnel carriers.
Lots of soldiers get killed because of that.
There's like a whole, probably 15 or 20 soldiers that got killed in one or two of those.
Lots of soldiers got injured.
But once again, you know, it's like this like weird, like, oh, we fire, we fight, and then there's a ceasefire and then we stop, then we go out, and then they just rebuild their forces again and repeat.
Now, one of the issues during that time is they also started, a lot of the foreign aid that they get, instead of building schools and hospitals, what do they do?
They build tunnels that lead into Israel to commit terrorist attacks.
So that was a big issue during that last operation.
Israel kind of figured out how to deal with that.
They basically created this wall that goes four meters into the ground.
It has sensors.
So they know where all the tunnels are.
Also, due to lots of intel work, and apparently they use some weird algorithm to figure out where the tunnels are.
For this past operation, they're able to destroy a huge amount of those tunnels.
And basically they're just designed to send terrorists into Israel.
And they were leading into some of the towns.
They're right outside the Gaza border.
Fast forward to the last operation, which was a couple weeks ago.
Same thing.
This was just completely unprovoked.
Basically, on the Temple Mountain, the big golden thing in Jerusalem.
It's the El Aqza Mosque.
During Ramadan, they tend to get a little bit radicalized and start causing problems.
Not so much as they would have, if they do some type of protest or something, they would have all the kids stand in front of them and they'll be in the back with rifles and they might shoot at you, but it's hard for you to shoot back.
Yeah, so that's where most of their funding comes from.
It's Qatar, it's Iran, and it's through all kinds of shell companies and things like that.
That's how most terrorism is funded in the world.
But that's kind of where we're at now.
Now, what I believe now, look, I'm no like geopolitical expert and so on, but there was like this even meme that came out that was like Bibi, Benjamin Netanyahu, after every one of these operations, like basically saying the same exact thing.
Oh, we diminished their ability to launch rockets.
And every time it's worse rockets, they reach further into Israel and so on and so forth.
Really what needs to be done is a full-scale operation to just clear that place.
The problem is these politicians are a little too afraid of body bags and dead Israeli soldiers coming home.
So like, look, is that or we're in the same cycle?
Every year in the country is paralyzed and people can't go to school and people get to war.
Well, and if you're an American citizen and you're anti-Israel, you might not necessarily be anti-Semitic.
But if you're in Hamas is, by definition, by even explicit self-definition, Hamas is anti-Semitic.
I mean, their leaders have said they want to round up all the Jews and exterminate them.
Like, there's no doubt about the fact that the hatred happening from the Gaza Strip on Israel is not only political, it's also like cultural, racial hatred.
And, you know, more to that, what was crazy in this last operation, that not only was, you know, the stuff going on in Gaza, there was actually a lot of internal stuff going on in Israel.
And they have quite a bit of control in Israeli society too.
For example, to get a kosher certificate, you need to go through some Orthodox organization that's basically extorting you for money to get a stamp that you serve kosher food.
You have to go through these guys if you want to marry your relatives.
So a lot of different things that they have control on in Israeli society, but they don't really contribute to Israeli society.
Most of them don't work.
They don't serve.
They don't pay taxes.
So there's, you know, basically the middle class of Israel, the people that do work, people that work in tech, people that own businesses, basically pay for everybody else.
I see.
Which is a big issue.
So what I like that now that the new government is forming, Bennett, who's going to serve as, I guess, the first prime minister, Naftali Bennett, first of all, he was a very experienced commander in the top tier one special force, actually the same one as Bibi, but at a much later date.
And I see him as, I think, this better leader from what I've seen from him over the last decade almost that's been in office.
And then two, he's what we call religious Zionist.
So they're a lot more chilled out on the religion side of it.
They all serve in the army.
In fact, most of it's starting to be more and more that the top tier units, the top-tier commanders are all from that kind of part of Jewish society in Israel.
What we call the religious nationalists or whatever.
So they're much more pro-Israel.
But at the same time, he's partnering with kind of what they would call the left, but it's not like the left when you think about it here in the U.S. Which is, I think, is going to be a much better balance than Bibi's far right and crazy Orthodox folks.
Also, I think for intelligence sharing, that's a big, probably a big reason to it.
You know, on the tech development side, on the business side, there's a lot of stuff that's going in between the two countries.
And, you know, of course, the Israeli Jewish lobby in the U.S. is very strong, making sure it's supporting Israel, which I think is good for the most part.
Like, you know, you have one country.
I would say Israel is probably the one country that's the true ally of the U.S. through thick and thin.
I don't think any other country in the world that's going to be like, yeah, we're there.
Well, and I think that people are so pissed off about what happened with Bush and Iraq with the intelligence that was either a lie or just bad intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I think that the U.S. is so pissed off about the fact that we got involved for bad reasons that we've forgotten, our people have forgotten how these terrorists actually want to fly more planes into buildings.
Why do we give a shit about what's going on in the Middle East?
We're in all these stupid wars.
It's like, yeah, I understand what you're saying.
But at the same token, it's like everybody else other than Israel in the region is like, there's active incel groups that just like, that are active groups that just want to fuck up Americans.
You know, and it's unfortunate that Iraq played out the way it did, and that there was so much distrust that was created in America with our own government about foreign operations like that.
Because there actually is a real threat over there.
Because if you think about the next probably big conflict that's going to happen, and I'm going to say it's probably going to be more on the cyber side, and it's already happening on that.
But if there is a war, it's probably going to be either a direct war or some type of proxy war between China.
I mean, we've already been fighting proxy wars with Iran for the last 20 years.
Iran has been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning.
I have a friend who's a U.S. Army guy who was blinded by Iranians fucking around there with lasers trying to blind snipers and things like that.
You also have a lot of defense and tech development that goes on either in cooperation or in some type of exchange between the U.S. and Israel, both on the military side, but also on the civilian side.
So that explains a little bit why the radical Islamists are so antagonistic toward Israel because they see it as like sort of a hub of the great enemy.
But we're basically at, you know, it's a very complicated geopolitical thing because you have, you know, on the one side, you know, China, Iran and Russia kind of as the axis now, right?
That's trying to take over the world.
But you also have that whole Middle Eastern society outside of Israel that's really incompatible with the Western world in every way you can think of it.
In the way they approach life, in the way they approach death, in the way they approach women's rights, and the way they approach everything, basically.
They actually changed the law when we had a, I think 2016, we had a big string of terrorist attacks, of stabbings and shootings.
And basically, before you had to have basically a valid reason to acquire a gun, like you live in the West Bank, you live by the Gaza Strip, you're a lawyer.
When that started happening, the internal minister, whoever handles it, changed it to where if you served in the infantry as a combat soldier or special forces soldier, you could also get that license.
And they made it a little bit easier to get that license.
I think – well, I can tell you for sure if you're carrying with a license in a place you're not supposed to carry, like a place that – like a business tells you.
It's a Class C misdemeanor, like a traffic case, so it's not serious.
But if you're carrying and you don't have a license, you get caught.
There's very serious penalties, but at the same time, the law is completely unenforceable in the sense that, like, has anyone ever just, like, has a cop ever come up to you and been like, hey, I need to see your license to carry?
I mean, they can ask for it if they see that there is a probable cause to ask for it, but they don't have to ask for it.
But the thing is, like the only place where it is illegal to carry and it's really enforced is like a federal building where they have metal detectors.
that's like that guy talking it's just like he's at the table like goes up to his chin and he's sitting there yeah Yeah, basically, basically.
But, you know, even with all our silly laws that we have here and even in the most restricted states, it's still a lot less restricted than most countries.
California has got the strictest gun laws that I've ever seen.
I mean, I lived in Illinois, Tennessee, California, and Texas now.
And Illinois, you had to have a void car, but there were a lot of people that had guns in Illinois because the vast majority of Illinois is very rural and there's a lot of hunting in Illinois.
But in California, if you live anywhere near the coast, it's like nobody has a fucking gun.
I remember I was at my office.
I owned an office or I rented an office in Orange County and I would work late, sometimes all night on my business because, you know, starting a small business.
And I had my handgun with me and I was cleaning it like at my desk and the cleaning crew came through because they would come through at like 10.30 p.m. or 11 p.m. to clean all the offices in the building.
And the cleaning guy was so scared that I was like, I had a gun.
He was like, oh, I was like, dude, it's my office.
You know, it's funny to me, but I think a lot of people that are anti-gun, their perception of what guns are and what, you know, everything around from movies.
You know, like I was training actually a family this morning and I was like explaining things and like the wife was talking about silencers, just explaining different things.
And she's like, well, you know, I thought silencers just make it like, you know, like in the movies, you know, it's like you can't hear it.
It's breaking the sound barrier.
Yeah, I'm like, it doesn't work though.
You have to have subsonic ammo.
And like, even with subsonic, you're still going to hear it, you know, stuff.
And we're talking about, what was it?
I mean, just like basic function of the gun.
Like, people just don't have any, or like, we're talking about how to rack the slide.
And like, somebody, like, you know, how in the movies, you know, they always like go, you know, they go back and forth.
Essentially, if you're going to another country and you can carry, you have some type of diplomatic visa or you have a license that was issued to you as a diplomat for that country.
So for example, I have a friend who runs a security company in Israel and occasionally he's guarded like Greg Abbott and other governors.
And so they'll have a police officer that comes to them as their bodyguard.
And they get basically a special license from the Israeli State Department to be able to carry their gun in Israel.
I just haven't, I've only shot my rifle like once or twice in my life.
And I've shot the Glock a million times and I've done the dry firing, you know, and work breathing and everything like that.
And it was just funny that since I, even though obviously a rifle was a much more efficient weapon for long range, I put so much more practice into my handgun that I was better at shooting it, even though the rifle was.
I don't really have anyone to train with in Krav Maga right now.
And then two, it's just i i really enjoy it yeah so brazilian jiu-jitsu is great the thing with with and i always try to explain to people that like people try to make kravmaga into like this mystical uh fairy tale unicorn martial art it's not really all it is it's stand-up that's basically muay thai boxing kickboxing and
And ground stuff that's basically Brazilian jiu-jitsu, maybe some judo, mixed in together, and then applied to self-defense situations.
Now, there's certain specialized units that they work undercover and they do a lot more in-depth fighting and things like that.
But Israeli military Krav Maga is very, very, very basic fighting skills because you don't need – and a lot of it is also teaching soldiers discipline, teaching them aggression.
You know, like when we do Krav Maga and the IDF, you get woken up in the middle of the night while you're sleeping and they tell you you have three minutes to be ready in the Krav Maga.
maga room and then they force you to do lots of push-ups lots of sprints and then maybe do some sparring and then maybe you learn some technique.
I see.
That's it.
There's not really what you would see at a local Krav Maga gym here.
It's very, very different.
Now, what I don't like today in the Krav Maga world, it has become very commercialized, become fitness maga.
And then add to that, a lot of people that teach Krav Maga don't take the time to learn other things.
So they think what they're teaching is the hot shit.
So one thing I've been lucky with is that I've been doing martial arts all my life, so I've seen different things.
And I've also worked with various Krav Maga organizations and various teachers.
And basically that taught me a lot of the things that I don't want to be doing.
And then kind of doing what I do now with tactical fitness, which is mixing in firearms and Krav Maga, there's a lot of stuff that just does not work using classical Krav Maga if you are involving a firearm.
And there's some holes in what would be called classical Krav Maga that are very well filled in with wrestling and jiu-jitsu.
Yeah, I mean, like, you go to a gym and you're a white belt in jiu-jitsu, you just started, you are going to get your ass kicked for three to six months before you have any chance against until the next white belt comes in.
I mean, if you see like funny YouTube videos of people getting, like, drunk people getting in fights, like, there might be one or two punches thrown, but usually it turns into wrestling pretty quick.
Somebody's pulling somebody's shirt over their head.
And I've seen him just absolutely manhandle dudes like they're six foot four football players.
They just could not do anything to him.
Okay.
Now with striking, you can be a really good striker, but there's always the puncher's chance.
Right.
Where someone sideswipes you, they hits you with a punch, you get knocked out.
So in that regard, grappling arts, jiu-jitsu wrestling, is very absolute.
But it also takes quite a bit of time to get proficient, where I would say you would be able to defend yourself.
And I would say it's a year to three years where I would say, after training Jiu-Jitsu like three times a week, if you don't have any other experience, you would probably become pretty proficient at it.
Like how long do you think it takes to become proficient enough in jiu-jitsu that you could defend yourself against somebody who doesn't know what the hell they're doing?
Because the vast majority of people who get in fist fights aren't.
They sprain their neck is kind of the one that's not really sprained their neck, but what happens when you get that whiplash effect, your brain kind of bounces back and forth.
So that's the concussion effect of it.
But once again, I think it really depends how much time you have to dedicate to this.
If this is something you're going to make your daily hobby, yeah, great.
Now, also, you also need to be learning it from a self-defense standpoint, not from a competitive standpoint.
Because there's a lot of things in jiu-jitsu that if you do in the street, could potentially get you hurt or even worse, killed, because it puts you in a really, really bad position.
Jiu-Jitsu is all on the ground.
Take your typical ground on 6th Street, what kind of shit you got on there.
Because I mean, I don't know a whole lot about Russian history or World War II history, just in a sort of superficial way.
But what I've heard that a lot of the soldiers that after World War II, a lot of the Russian soldiers were very mistreated by the Russian government in terms of like gulags and there was like a lot of paranoia about Western culture influencing them during the war.
So he should have, like, he's, I think he's like 20 years in the Soviet military.
Like, he should have been a general.
And he only finished as a major or something.
And then they also, like, right after the war, they sent him off, or not, like, a little bit after that, they sent him off to Sakhalin Island, which is the easternmost island in Russia, the one that's right in front of Japan.
Really cold, really snowy, remote place to, like, maintain airfields there.
And I can't do it anymore because it's been 10 years and I haven't spoken Spanish since.
But I just remember it got to the point where I couldn't.
I never really was fluent at speaking it, only present tense.
But I could understand it all.
And I remember we had some painters that were squatting.
One was named Eden and one was Pablo.
And they were squatting in these apartments.
So the Mexicans, what they do is they cross the border illegally and they work on painting crews and contractor crews so they can send money back home.
But I think in Mexico, the best part is the service.
they take care of you like the most sincere high quality service you'll have is in mexico by far brazil is pretty good they're just really nice but like mexico is like the best service people are like really sincere about it like they they want to seem grateful and yeah yeah like real grateful they just want to make sure you have the best possible time so i've had that experience like we had that experience at our wedding it was just phenomenal because awesome yeah so Before we wrap up,
tell me a little bit about, share a little bit about Tactical Fitness, how people can get in touch with you in Austin and what kind of classes and services you offer.
And I will say just before you get started, that as a customer of yours, it is an awesome experience.
So I highly recommend from personal experience working with you.
Well, and one thing that I really appreciated having worked with you is when you when you purchase a handgun, you know, you can you can YouTube the basics of how it works, but there's actually like eight million things you have to do in order to use it properly.
Not eight million, but like there's several different steps, right?
Yeah, like everything from drawing from a holster to gun safety to reloading, tactical reloads, your whole philosophy about the workspace and how that works.
All that stuff is so important.
People don't realize that it's more than just pointing and shooting.
