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
They'll use shepherds to kind of walk a certain area and give them intel on what the IDF is doing.
And Shepherds is just like the nickname used to be a lot of people.
No, like actual shepherd, but they're employed.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
But they're employed by Hamas.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
A date which will live in infamy.
Tell me a little bit about what it was like for you, what it's like just for anybody to serve in the Israeli Defense Force.
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...
But if you're on your own, then they...
But if you're on your own, you don't have that.
So they kind of give you support for that, for the process.
And on an HR side, they kind of help you out a little bit more than a regular soldier would.
But serving in the IDF, I would say, it's probably very different from what I've heard from my friends that serve in the U.S. military.
We don't get deployed for like nine months into a different country.
Everything is inside of Israel unless there's a war on the border.
And then we're in Gaza, we're in Lebanon, we're whatever, which doesn't happen very often.
So most of your service as a soldier, particularly as a combat soldier, is spent doing security operations.
So you're on the border, you're doing surveillance, you're doing security ops.
If you are in the West Bank, what we call Judea and Samaria, the occupied territory, quote unquote, you do basically the police work.
So the military is the authority in those areas.
So you do basically arrest warrants, you do stakeouts, you do surveillance, things of that nature, you do checkpoints.
So you had to go make arrests and shit?
Yeah.
I mean, it's just, I mean, during my service, it was kind of calm, so they're pretty straightforward.
It's like knock on the door, hey, come out, we're taking you.
Right, right.
The main things you dealt with was people like throwing bricks at your head from the third story of a house.
Just because you're an Israeli soldier and they hate you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or on occasion, maybe people shooting at you or something like that.
The Gaza border was a little more interesting.
Most of the work there is actually done by snipers because everything is very long distances.
So you're 200, 300 meters, or people are 200, 300 meters from the fence.
And basically you're preventing terrorism, you're preventing IEDs being laying, and you're doing surveillance.
So you'd be scoping out for people like that.
It looked like they were planting bombs on a road.
Basically, yeah.
So what they do, they'll use shepherds to kind of walk a certain area and give them intel on what the IDF is doing.
And shepherds is just like the nickname used to be a family?
No, like actual shepherd, but they're Psalm 23.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
But they're employed by Hamas.
So, you know, they tell them, hey, give us info and from when the patrols are coming through and whatever.
Okay.
So my understanding is Palestine isn't technically a country.
No, it's not.
And there's a difference between Palestine as a whole and Hamas specifically, right?
They're not exactly the same.
So there's a very complicated history here.
Basically, in the 1900s, in the late 1800s, 1900s, there's a Zionist movement.
And Jews started moving to what's called Palestine, which was what the British called that area of the world.
Now, Palestine was basically part of...
And this is just like a biblically-based movement, right?
Like we're going to move.
This is the land promised to Abraham.
Exactly.
So we're going to just occupy it.
It was not occupied.
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.
Were they cool with it at the time?
They're like, hey, look, these Jews are selling.
Yeah, they were selling it to Jews.
They're just moving to Jesus.
They were selling lands to Jews.
Right, right.
So the land of Palestine was what the British, when it was under the British mandate, called that area.
And I believe that stems from the Philistines.
So what country is technically sovereign over Palestine then today?
If it's not really a country, is there a nation that claims Palestine is their territory?
It's Israel.
Israel.
So Israel is basically like, look, everybody in Palestine is actually in Israel.
Exactly.
Now, within Israel, you have Arabs.
They're Israelis.
They're Israeli citizens.
They're Muslims.
There's Christian Arabs.
There's also a subgroup called Druze.
It's like 18% of the population or something.
Something like that.
And they have representation in the Knesset or in our parliament.
They have full rights.
In fact, they probably live better than most Israelis because a lot of them don't pay taxes.
But in Palestine, the Palestinians aren't recognized as citizens of Israel, are they?
No.
So they are in, I believe it was one during the Six-Day War.
So all the lands around Jerusalem, and we'll call Judea, Samaria, the west bank of the Jordan River.
Now, that's been held by Israel for many strategic reasons.
If you look on the topography of it, basically it's all hilltops that look down on all coast of Israel.
So this is the high ground.
The same thing with the Golan Heights, why Israel is never going to get that up.
Because when it was under Syrian control, they would shell Israeli settlements all over northern Israel regularly, like just complete civilians.
So that's basically what Palestine.
Now, here's where things become even more complicated.
So Israel, up until I believe 2005, was occupying the Gaza Strip.
We said, enough, we don't want to be part of this.
We pulled out.
By the way, up until the second Intifada, which was around early 2000s, Israelis were going in and out of Gaza.
Arabs were going in Gaza.
There's a lot of commerce.
It was good for everybody.
Let's put it this way.
That was when it was occupied by Israel, right?
Yes.
I see.
Yeah, but it was a very cordial and good business relationship.
And there was Israeli settlements in there, too.
2005, whatever politics Israel pulls out.
Now, when we use the word settlement, does a settlement have a different legal status than just owning a house in Jerusalem?
I don't know.
I don't know on the technical side of it.
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.
Yeah, something like that.
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.
So is it just like a concession they pulled out?
Or was it because they didn't want to maintain security in the area?
Yeah, something like that.
So Israel pulls out of the Gaza Strip.
At that time, it was under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
That was the local governance there.
They pull out a year or two later, they set up an ambush on an Israeli tank crew and kidnap a soldier for five years.
Jesus.
Keep them as a POW.
During that time...
Just because they're pissed off that Israel exists?
It's always the same type of deal.
During that time, I don't know if it was before or after.
We got to kind of have someone look up the facts on that.
During that time, Hamas, which is the current group that rules the strip, basically has a violent coup.
Actually, there was an election.
They get voted in by the locals.
The locals became kind of radicalized for whatever reason and decided to vote for Hamas.
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.
And by the way, that's funded by U.S. taxpayers.
So U.S. taxpayers give aid to Palestine, and then that aid is then used to sell families of terrorists who have been arrested by Israel.
Yeah.
Or killed.
Right.
Anyhow, basically, there's a violent takeover.
So they get elected, but there's also a violent takeover.
They just kill a bunch of Palestinian Authority members.
Hamas does.
Yeah, Hamas does.
And then that leads you to Operation Castlead in 2008.
They started lobbying rockets all over southern Israel.
They didn't have the best capabilities back then.
Israel goes into Gaza, clears house a little bit, goes back out.
Forward to 2012, this was during my service.
We were supposed to go in.
Same thing happens.
They started shooting rockets.
No real provocation for it.
I don't know, maybe.
Actually, no, there was a slight provocation, which Israel just took out some terrorist leader inside the Gaza Strip.
Anyways, they started lobbying rockets again.
There was no ground offensive, but there was a large air offensive they did.
Forward two more years, 2014, I don't remember what the operation is called anymore.
A lot of the guys, there were officers from my time, were there.
We had actually one officer that was killed.
I got hit with an RPG.
Sorry to hear that.
Were you serving in 2014?
No, I was already out.
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.
They're not eating.
I mean, you know, starving yourself all day is not going to make you a happy person.
But there's always, during Ramadan, we're always on high alert because there's always extra terrorist attacks, extra people starting to do stuff.
But basically what happened, I believe they were just starting to cause a lot of trouble in that area.
So our border police came in and started clearing house.
And by clearing house, you mean just like arresting people or arresting people, clearing the mosque.
No one was killed, right?
No, not really.
Not really.
I mean, I'm sure if they throw them all top cocktails to the police, they'll get shot.
Right, of course.
You know, they pick up a big brick and they'll get shot.
It's just how it is.
That's anywhere in the world.
So Hamas takes it upon itself to defend the honor of Muhammad, whatever.
And there's an election about ready to happen in Palestine, right?
So isn't there a political incentive internally for Hamas to take a radical position against Israel?
probably yeah there's there's always they're supposed to have an election there since like 2004 or something i I don't know.
There's always a political incentive to all those things.
So anyhow, Hamas, which is in the Gaza, other side, not even connected.
The Gaza Strip is not connected to the West Bank to Jerusalem.
It's a good strip of land between them.
So they decided to start lobbying rockets into Israel, indiscriminately.
I saw the Iron Dome.
Yeah.
I saw the videos.
So those rockets, they're not guided.
They just choose degree and shoot.
And they're trying to hit basically civilians.
They actually killed a lot of Israeli Arabs with those rockets, probably five.
They killed a lot of their own.
They killed a lot of their own because they had misfires and landed in Gaza.
They don't care.
Like, you know, during my service, I saw it time and time again, Hamas terrorists using children as human shields on the border, like regularly.
So they'll have a rifle and they'll just be holding the kid?
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.
And that's what the world doesn't understand.
They want those casualties.
Right, for political reasons.
For political reasons.
Because the world, bless Europe, but they're in la la land.
You know, it makes it look like Israel is killing all these civilians.
It's not that Israel is killing the civilians.
They're killing their own civilians by using them as human shields.
Well, they even threaten to kill people if they leave their homes.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So it's to make it look like, oh, Israel is killing all these civilians.
But really, it's them wanting that to happen for the world to have pity on them or whatever they're trying to achieve.
So that was the last conflict.
I was very unhappy with the government's choice not to just go in and just clear the place out completely.
Gaza or all Palestine.
Gaza.
The West Bank, there's not really that much problems.
Right, unless they're, but if they're funding Hamas.
You know what I mean?
If there's other power, if the West Bank is funding Hamas.
So I don't think they're funding Hamas.
Hamas is, most of the funding that Hamas gets is from Iran and Qatar.
Right, and Iran's been notorious for funding terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They're meddling with everyone.
They're meddling with everyone.
I don't understand why we allow that to happen.
Ask Grandpa Joe.
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.
In any other country, if they're getting shelled, they're just going to occupy.
Like if Texas was getting shelled by Mexico, we would annex Mexico in a heartbeat.
Yeah.
Maybe not this administration, but any other administration.
Yeah.
And it's always been this double standard against Israel.
And I think in the end, it just goes back to anti-Semitism.
You know, people will say it's anti-Israel.
It's not anti-Semitism.
You know how much anti-Semitism there's been since that operation in New York, people getting attacked, in Los Angeles.
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.
Yeah, absolutely.
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.
Right, with Israeli Arabs.
There was Israeli Arabs attacking Jews on the streets.
So we have a few, quite a few cities that are mixed.
Right.
You know, Tel Aviv, I think, is one, right?
Not Tel Aviv, Yafo, which is kind of the southern part of Tel Aviv.
There's another city called Lod, there's Haifa.
But they're mixed cities.
And there was like synagogues getting firebombed.
There was people getting lynched.
And of course, there was stuff on the other side, Israelis or Jews attacking Arabs as well.
But it was much, much less.
I mean, they had to bring in the whole border guard to basically have martial law there.
Right.
Which was pretty crazy.
Because to me, if you're an Israeli Arab, you're the freest Arab you can be.
Right.
Because you go to any other countries, you don't really have democracy.
Right.
I mean, it's not.
Like, if you're gay, they're going to throw you off a roof.
Right.
Can you legally be gay in Israel?
I don't know anything about Israel.
Can you legally be gay in Israel?
Yeah, you can get married.
No shit.
I didn't know that.
It's completely like...
So all the gay Arabs love Israel.
I'm sure they do.
But I'm telling you, you know, like women have like full, like they have all the same rights that the Jews have.
To me, it's crazy when people say Israel is an apartheid.
You're out of your fucking mind.
Well, it's the only Middle Eastern country that has multi-racial communities, I think.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure that's the country.
Not only that, Arabs get actually extra help.
Because of a perceived disadvantage?
Because they're a minority.
So for university study, for jobs, things like that, they get extra help in terms of integrating into society, so to speak.
And a lot of them don't pay taxes.
You go to a lot of these Arab villages, they're driving much nicer cars than your average Jewish Israeli.
They have much bigger homes than your average Jewish Israeli.
So what are your thoughts on Bibi as a leader?
And I heard today that his political opponents were able to form a government.
I'm very happy with that.
Because Bibi would be a great foreign minister.
He's a terrible prime minister.
Why do you think so?
So he's a very eloquent speaker.
He's an absolute pro-politician.
Like, I don't think there's any better politicians I've ever seen than Bibi, like anywhere.
But a lot of his policies are not good for Israel internally.
And it's causing a lot of issues internally in society, like he was trying to pass some law.
I don't remember what it was, but basically it would make non-Jews like, it would make it seem like non-Jews are second-class citizens.
I see.
So it's very popular with the ultra-right folks.
Well, do you think every time Hamas bombs Israel that the Israeli people get a little bit more radicalized against Arabs?
No, no, because if you talk to most Israelis, they're very like just live and let live.
They don't care.
They just want to have a nice home, good education, good food, safety.
That's it.
But like most people.
And then the other issue politically is that he always aligns with the ultra-Orthodox parties.
And they are probably the biggest scourge on Israeli society.
Why is that?
They don't work.
They don't serve in the army.
They're just conscientious objectors.
They're morally opposed to serving in the military.
Not even that, it's because the military is mixed.
They don't want to be serving with women.
I see.
But the main thing is they don't work.
They don't pay taxes and they get subsidized by the government.
And their population grows exponentially because they have 10, 12 kids.
Right.
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.
Wow.
I see.
Marriage.
If your spouse is not Jewish, you can't get married initially legally in Israel.
You'd have to go get married outside of Israel, bring your marriage certificate, then it would get recognized.
I see.
Burial as well.
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.
I see.
So I think it's going to be much better for unity in the country.
You know, like you have an election issue, you have like 30 parties you're voting for.
It's insane.
Right.
So why do you think it is that the United States takes such an interest in Israel and should we give a shit?
So a couple things.
One, Israel is very much aligned with America in many philosophical and just Judeo-Christian kind of backgrounds.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's the only country like that in the entire region.
So if you think you got big countries like Turkey, it's all Muslim.
You got Egypt, that's all Muslim.
Basically, all of Northern Africa.
So you have Europe.
So if we ever need to do a major operation in the Middle East, it's nice to have a foothold in Israel.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
And people forget that.
We get frustrated.
We're like, why are we involved with Israel?
It's America first.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah, it's a real threat.
And also, if you think about like on a geopolitical side, like if the U.S. is not there, then it's going to be China and Iran.
Yeah.
You know, and those are people that you don't want to be there.
And you definitely don't want them close to Europe.
Right.
And starting to take over.
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.
Both of his eyes.
Just one of his eyes.
Thankfully, his non-shooting eye.
They got the wrong eye.
Yeah, they got the wrong eye.
He was actually looking through his scope and then sapped his eye.
I didn't realize that they could even do that.
Makes sense.
Yeah, because the lens probably magnifies magnifications.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you have 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.
Well, you know, they call the U.S. the big Satan and Israel the Little Satan.
I didn't realize that.
Yeah, that's like a thing.
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.
Right.
Well, I mean, fundamentally, the mentality is that the secular government has to be religious, right?
It's Sharia law.
And that's just totally antithetical to Western culture.
Exactly.
I mean, we believe in a very separate government.
Yeah.
So, and that's what a lot of people don't understand.
Like, they think, oh, they're just other people in other parts of the world.
No, they're other people.
They're completely non-compatible with the way you live and want to live and the things you believe in.
Which is okay.
They're entitled to their opinions.
We just don't want that coming to us.
Right.
You know?
So where does Iran get its money?
Is Iran funded by China?
Oil.
They have a lot of oil, oil money.
We're still going to be a little bit screwed when that runs out.
I'm sure China is supporting them in some way or shape or form or through some type of business exchange.
But I would say probably oil is probably their biggest funder.
They don't really have any other natural resources in that part of the world.
Interesting.
It's interesting how fucked up Iran got just in the second half of the 20th century.
I mean, there was this graphic novel that I had to read in college called Persepolis.
And it's about this girl that was growing up in Iran during the Iranian Revolution.
It's like they were very Western in their culture in those early 70s.
I think that was the revolution in 79 or something like that.
And after that, it just totally changed.
I can't believe that we installed the Shah over there and let that happen.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, also Lebanon, same thing.
Lebanon was called the Paris of the Middle East up until they changed their mind on who they want to lead them.
My dad was actually there when that was going on.
He was in college.
He was in a jazz band.
His college jazz band did a Middle East tour.
Wow.
It was a college program.
And he played trombone, and he was in Lebanon, like right when the fighting broke out.
Yeah.
Just playing the trombone.
He said he couldn't believe it.
He said a Coca-Cola cost 10 times more than a beer when he was there.
Really?
Yeah, I don't know why, but for some reason, the beer was cheap.
So it's very, very mixed pot of things that involve this.
And you can say, you know, Israel is occupied, this, that.
But look, at the end, it is the only free country in that entire part of the world.
The only free country.
Like, you can say whatever you want.
And there's things I don't agree with in Israel.
You know, like how they were handling COVID.
You can say they were the first out of COVID, whatever, at what cost?
Right.
You know, they're like tapping people's phones and sending them text messages that they need to go into quarantine.
That's not good.
Right.
And unfortunately, Israelis have the mentality of I need daddy government telling me what to do and running.
It's sort of bizarre given what happened last time big government got out of goal for the Jews.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ, you'd think that they'd be like fucking liberty.
The difference is that the government is Jewish.
It's not a completely different group ruling over you.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I left Israel too, because I don't like big government.
I don't like having to have a license for everything.
I don't like...
Can you carry a weapon in Israel?
You can.
You can.
So it used to be a little bit harder.
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.
You're in a jewelry business.
Exactly.
So you have to add a justifiable reason.
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.
You see the Constitutional Carry passed?
Oh, it passed?
Yeah, the guy hasn't signed it yet, but he said he was going to on Twitter.
so that's will that fuck with your business Did you teach classes?
License to carry is not really a big part of my business.
1% or something like that.
So it's not really going to affect me.
I train more people that actually want to learn how to shoot because the license to carry is kind of bullshit as is.
So I don't care either way.
I think it's probably good that people need to know the laws in one shape or form, but I think it's also kind of bullshit course to begin with.
So it's like, you know, you're making me go through this bullshit, having me pay money, waste my time to get this license.
That's really my right in this country.
So it's good, it's bad, whatever.
It's still going to be available to get your license to carry because there's certain states that you do need a license for.
And if you don't have a license, you won't be able to carry there.
So people that travel, people that want to be able to carry in like 43 different states will probably want to get their license either way.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I'm excited about it.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
I don't think anything is going to happen.
That's what I think.
You know, when everyone was freaking out when Open Carry passed, it was right when I opened my business.
And I was like, why are you guys, like, what's the difference?
Nobody really opened carries anyway.
You see, like, the occasional old white dude at Cabela's open carry.
That's it.
Like.
It's such a stupid flex.
Yeah, it's just dumb.
I would never open carry.
I don't want to be that guy.
It's just a dumb thing to do.
I didn't even like going to the movie theater by myself because people look at me like I'm a mass shooter, like white dude in his 30s at the movies.
Yeah, sorry.
There you go.
So, I mean, it's silly.
It's silly.
People are freaking out about it.
People are going to freak about this.
You know, when campus carry passed, that was part of the whole open carry thing.
People were like, oh, there's going to be mass shootings.
I didn't realize in Texas there was campus carry.
So basically, if you're a student, you can carry on anything.
You can carry on any campus regardless of your students.
You have a license, yeah.
Right, right.
That makes sense.
Now, private universities, they can stipulate, because it's basically a private business, that you're not.
But if it's a state university, they can't prevent...
Look, I know for a fact that a lot of people carry it regardless because...
What are the penalties?
If you get busted carrying a gun and you don't have a license, what happens?
So if you don't have a license, I believe it's a class A misdemeanor.
So like a serious misdemeanor.
Do you lose the right to purchase a gun ever again?
I don't know.
I don't know about that.
Because, I mean, depending on the penalty, it's almost worth it.
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.
I don't know what it is.
You can pretend you're already committing another crime, though, right?
Like, I would imagine that most people who get caught illegally carrying a firearm get caught because they're in the middle of doing another crime.
Yeah, so at that point, it doesn't, like, that's one of the things that kind of drives me crazy in the U.S. with some of the laws.
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?
No, they can't do that.
They have to have probable cause to even stop you.
Right.
Even if they see you with a gun, they can't ask for it, right?
No.
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.
Right.
Or airports.
But everywhere else, like we have a sign.
Like, what is that going to stop?
Right.
You know, when they have signs at schools.
No, no firearms allowed.
Like, has that stopped any, like, shooting?
Don't they have to have, like, the right signage, too?
I've heard, I don't know if this is just a white guy running around.
It doesn't, yeah, they have to have the right signage and all this, but it doesn't matter.
Like, once again, the guy that wants to commit a crime is not going to care.
Just like, you know.
Shootings have already been illegal, or have already been made illegal.
Yeah, murder is illegal.
Some people kill people, right?
You know, in Israel, we have very stringent gun laws.
All the criminals have guns.
Of course.
Somehow they acquire their guns.
I bet it wasn't.
Well, like in Mexico, and I don't know if this is certainly I've heard that you can only get a gun at like in one place.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, yeah, but everybody just goes there and gets their fucking gun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or they bring it over the border.
So how many firearms do you own?
I don't know.
No, I'm just kidding.
I do know.
I'm not going to say that.
Okay.
I need to ask a person.
A bit.
A bit.
I mean, this is what I do for a living, you know.
There's not really any firearms that I own.
They're just like, oh, I just wanted this gun.
Everything I use for work or some type of partnership I have with the company or something like that.
Like I have a fucking.
You start a church in Waco.
Yeah.
Synagogue.
Don't tell that asshole that they're signing to the ATF, though.
What's the name?
Chipman or whatever.
Oh, that fucking dude.
That was talking about how he was supportive of a ban on AR-15s.
Yeah, I didn't even know how he didn't know how to define an assault rifle.
It was pretty funny.
Well, and like, you know when someone is lying?
He's responsible for like 1% of homicides in the fucking United States?
You know when he's lying?
You know when someone is lying and you're just like, you're fucking lying to me?
Yes.
And they're like, no, I'm not lying.
You're like, I know you're fucking lying to me.
What are you trying to do here?
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.
Right.
Which is still in California.
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.
And I pleaded my fucking gun.
It's a dirty.
It's like, you're cleaning.
I'm cleaning.
We're all cleaning.
Yeah, yeah.
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.
And the kind of person who would own them.
Yeah, it's from the movies.
Yeah.
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.
Back and forward.
Yeah.
And you're like, you don't do that.
You're going to cause yourself a malfunction.
Is there any gun that requires you to go back and forth?
No.
Like, has there ever been?
I mean, a bolt action.
Right.
A bolt action.
That makes sense.
A semi-no, there's a spring.
Right.
It's going to bring it forward.
Is it because the, I wonder if it's because the fake guns they used in the movies didn't have a spring.
And so the actors had to.
No, they had springs because they use blank guns.
Something has to cycle the action.
Right.
So they have springs, but it's, it's just.
But anyways, but it's like, that's where like people's conceptions of guns are in this country.
So if they're anti-gun, they don't know anything, like they see it in the movies.
It must be true.
Right.
Right?
They don't have any other conception of it.
So that's also a big problem in this country.
Like a lot of people, we have a saying in Israel.
It's like you live in a movie.
Right.
Like when you have your conception of everything is like in the movies, basically.
So.
So have you gotten to the point where if you don't have your gun, you feel naked?
Oh, yeah.
Like I was just in Brazil.
Yeah.
And like, I was with the police the entire time.
So like I was as safe as you can be.
And your whole body's a weapon.
Yeah, you know, but you got three dudes with an AK coming at you to rob you.
There's not much you can do.
But I was with the police the entire time.
And like we drive somewhere for lunch or whatever, and I'd get out of the car and I'd be like, fuck, where's my guy?
I'm like, oh, I'm in Brazil.
Never mind.
I don't have my gun with me.
So can you, are there any countries that recognize ARC that allow Americans to carry a firearm?
No.
It's impossible.
That's crazy.
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.
Right.
And it makes sense for like Secret Service and stuff.
And then go somewhere.
Yeah, or like vice versa as an air marshal, like an Israeli air marshal has a diplomatic passport.
So he can carry whatever the fuck he wants.
Yeah.
But he can't like some places, and the same thing for like U.S. air marshals.
Like some countries, they can take their guns with them.
Some countries they have to leave their gun at the airport.
It's different every place.
You know, it's funny.
You never really see any political leaders carrying a firearm.
Like, if I was president of the United States, even with Secret Service, I would want to carry.
You know, from the professional side, you don't want the person you're protecting carrying.
Just because it's more of a liability than not even that.
They're not going to know the protocols and they're just going to get in the way when you're trying to defend them.
Right.
Like, their job is not to defend them.
So that's why they have all that security.
But presidents get shot, man.
Hasn't happened in a minute, but if only JFK was carrying, he would have been able to counter snipe.
Yeah.
Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on JFK's assets?
I don't know.
It's such conspiracy theory land.
I know.
But as a professional, I don't know.
I mean, you were a sniper.
I mean, I haven't looked at the details of it in a while, but how far was it that he shot him?
I don't even know.
I don't even know.
Probably like 300 yards or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And he shot a couple times.
I think he missed the first time.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I got to look into it.
But look, I've shot with iron sights to 500 yards.
Yeah.
It's doable.
Yeah.
If you have the right training.
It's funny.
I went shooting on my, I have some family friends that have some, a lot of acreage north of Boston.
Okay.
I took my AR and my clock and went up there and they just set up like a steel target.
Must have been 100 yards.
Maybe a little bit more than 100 yards.
Just kind of a standard steel plate that had like a spray-painted red dot on it.
And it was funny because I was shooting it with my AR, no problem.
And having taken lessons from you, I was hitting it more often with my Glock.
Oh, really?
Because of what you were.
Well, is your rifle zeroed?
Yeah, it is.
It is.
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.
There you go.
Yeah.
But it was awesome.
They couldn't believe it.
The guys that I was with, they're like, man, that's amazing.
Tactical fitness.
Tactical fitness.
That's right, man.
Yeah, yeah.
So you said that you were in Brazil.
I know that you're a big Krav Maga guy, and I'm a big Joe Rogan fan.
Sure.
And he's always talking about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Sure.
What's the difference between Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Krav Maga?
Advantages, disadvantages?
Do you know anything about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?
Yeah.
What's the problem?
First of all, I probably train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu now more than I train Krav Maga.
One, I don't have anyone to train.
Do you train personally or when you teach?
When I train personally.
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.
That's it.
It's basically MMA for self-defense.
Got it.
That's what it is.
And people try to make Krav Maga this mystical art that's super unique.
And you're going to be Superman if you learn it.
All it is is just MMA.
In fact, the founder of Krav Maga was, you can say, one of the OG MMA fighters.
So his dad was a police officer in Bratislava.
He trained in boxing, in Japanese jiu-jitsu, in judo, in wrestling.
Just to be a better cop?
Yeah, but he also trained his son, the founder of Krav Maga, in those.
Now, this was in the 30s and 40s.
When the Nazis started taking over, he started using his martial arts skill to defend his community.
So the Nazis would come in and he'd just beat the shit out of them?
Basically, yeah.
Him and his gym buddies.
Man, Quentin Tarantino needs to make a movie out of that.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be good.
So he came to what at the time was, under British mandate, Palestine.
He started training the Agana there, I believe, which was the precursor to the IDF.
And then he became the IDF's chief fitness and Krav Maga instructor.
At that time, there might have been a different name for everybody.
It was Kapap, which was fighting face-to-face, if you translate it.
And then it became Krav Maga, which just means contact combat.
Is Krav Maga Hebrew?
Yeah, it's a Hebrew word, yeah.
It just means contact combat.
It doesn't mean self-defense.
Right.
Is that what the IDF teaches?
Yeah.
Okay.
And then in the 60s, it became available to civilians.
And it was adapted to civilians.
Like people, I get very little people, oh, teach me military Krav Maga.
I'm like, it is completely irrelevant to your day-to-day existence.
How to fight somebody off grabbing your purse.
Like they don't teach that.
Yeah.
But it's like, you know, what soldiers learn is, first of all, very little on hand-to-hand.
I've heard that about the U.S. military, too.
My father was in the Marines.
But you don't, like as a soldier, you don't need to know a lot of hand-to-hand.
Unless your unit works like undercover or something like that, you don't need to know a lot of hand-to-hand.
There's always a firearm involved.
Yeah.
There's always a firearm.
There's always three or four other guys.
You don't work alone.
You're not John Rambo.
Right.
You know, so like IDF Krav Maga is use your rifle to hit him in the face or block a knife with your rifle, create distance.
And then hopefully you shoot him or one of your buddies at that point will shoot him.
That's it.
So it's mostly about creating distance.
Yeah.
Creating distance and getting to your rifle.
That's all like Krav Maga and the IDF.
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.
Right.
I've noticed that the martial arts generally, it gets very siloed and almost culty.
Yeah.
I'm a karate guy.
I'm a type of kid.
I'm no guy.
I'm a Brazilian dijitsu guy.
Yeah.
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.
And if I'm using it...
Which one do you think is more practical in like a bar fight situation?
I would say this.
If you had a very limited time to learn, you're better off learning striking and what I would say classical Krav Maga.
Because Jiu-Jitsu, although it is extremely effective, it takes a very, very long time for it to be effective.
In terms of it for a long time.
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.
Is that what you're saying?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Thankfully, I had a little bit of my fighting experience, so I knew a few things.
So I was still getting tapped out left and right, but it's probably not as bad as some of the folks coming in.
Now, the other hole in jiu-jitsu is there's no striking.
So if you get hit in the face, you have no idea how to deal with that.
So Krav Maga might have an advantage in terms of learning how to take a punch.
Yeah.
You spar, you fight, you punch.
It's a striking base.
I didn't realize that there was, there wasn't striking.
There's zero strikes.
It's all grappling.
I see.
And frankly, most fights probably kind of are.
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.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Now, look, the beauty of grappling sports is they're absolute.
So there is no luck that's involved there.
So like if I am fighting a certain person and he has no grappling experience, he's going to have zero clue as to what I'm doing to him.
And more than likely, he's going to do the wrong things that will make it easier for me to control him or take him down or submit him.
And that's what people that come into jiu-jitsu for the first time experience.
Like, you know, my instructor here in Austin, Gabe Martins at IGJ ATX, shout out to Gabe.
He's a five foot five.
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.
What about against a layman, right?
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.
Maybe six months.
But once again, if you are not at a high level and you're not used to people trying to punch at you.
Right.
It's going to be hard.
It's going to be very hard for you to deal with that.
So what is the art to taking a punch in the face?
Like me as somebody who has no hand-to-hand combat experience, like I see movies, right?
I think, man, if you get punched in the face, you get punched in the fucking face.
But like, what is why is it that Tyson can get hit in the face eight million times and it's not a big deal?
And then another person get hit in the face one time by a weak person and just be leveled.
So there's certain aspects to it.
One, it depends how much you're ready for that punch.
Right.
So if you're just caught like completely loose, there's a good chance you're going to get your brain rocked.
Right.
Two, it's also experience learning to fight through that.
Like I said, if the first time you're getting punched in the face in the street, it's going to be hard for you to deal with that.
Versus you've done it a thousand times in the gym, it's no big deal.
Now, is it good to be punched in the face?
No, you're going to get brain damage either way.
Right.
But yeah, I think it's partially genetic.
It has to do with your bone structure.
It has to do with your facial structure.
It has to do with your neck muscles.
If you got strong neck muscles, it's hard for your head to get twisted around, to get twisted back.
Do you think that a big part of what happens when people get punched in the face?
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.
Go learn jiu-jitsu.
It's 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.
Right.
Broken glass.
Broken.
Exactly.
Other people that kick you in the head.
So Jiu-Jitsu, you want to learn jiu-jitsu, great.
Just make sure you learn it with self-defense in mind.
Same thing with wrestling, same thing with judo, same thing with boxing, whatever you want to call it for that matter.
It doesn't matter what it is.
If you're learning it for self-defense, have that self-defense mindset and tactic for it.
If you're learning it for sport, that's something else.
But don't expect it to be per se effective for self-defense.
Because once you take it out of the one-on-one dynamic in the gym and you take it outdoors, it's completely different.
Completely different.
Makes sense.
Like the guys that I'm training right now, they're visiting.
They both have Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu background.
And for some of the scenarios, I throw a knife in.
Just a training knife.
Changes everything.
And before the training, so I had him do it a little bit before I taught him a few things.
They just did not know how to handle it at all.
And there are people that have been training for a year or two in jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai.
So they had the striking background, but they didn't have the self-defense training with that.
You might get a kick out of this.
This is my grandfather's World War II helmet.
This is K-Wark from the...
Ha, badass.
That's 1944 Navy issue.
Badass.
Take it out.
Take a look.
If you know a guy that takes care of blades, let me know because I need somebody to go do some work.
Yeah, polish this up.
Yeah.
I can ask.
Actually, probably my friend John knows someone, but I'll ask.
Isn't that neat, though?
That's badass.
That should be in the museum somewhere.
I know, man.
I'm just going to have to keep it in the family.
You know, it's funny, people always ask me about blade training and stuff.
I'm like, listen, the only thing I use my knife for is to opening my Amazon packages.
Yeah, me too.
I use this to open boxes.
It's still sharp.
But yeah, that hunk of metal, man, from World War II, it's got his name spray-painted on the front of it.
I got an old black man.
Man, I think they had better helmets than we did in the IDF.
Dang.
I don't know.
I mean, what's it really going to do?
Shrapnel.
It'll keep shrapnel rebel or rubble.
Maybe like tree lens and shit if you're getting artillery and bastards.
I got these.
My dad gave these to me a couple years ago.
That's better.
That's good luck.
I like the K-Bar a lot, though.
Yeah, that's...
You gotta get a bayonet to fix that.
Yeah.
Bayonette lug on your rifle.
Yeah.
You guys use bayonets in the IDF?
No.
I know a guy that I have a buddy that served in Afghanistan.
He got gutted with somebody, a terrorist with a bayonet.
I was like, I didn't even know they even did that, use bayonets anymore.
Some forces do.
Yeah, yeah.
The more thrown together forces.
Just doesn't seem like it.
I mean, it seems like if you could stab somebody, you could always shoot them.
I guess it makes sense, though, if you've got an M1 grand and it's got eight rounds, then it makes sense that you might want to conserve ammo.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
It made sense with those World War II weapons that were really bulky and had a very low ammo.
But Nowadays.
You've almost certainly fired an M1 grand, right?
Oh, I fucking love the M1 Grand.
It's so fun.
They'll beat the hell out of your arm, though.
They're not as bad as the Mauser.
What was the English one?
Was it an Enfield?
The English bolt action rifle.
I don't remember.
Super heavy, man.
That thing, because I got a bleeding disorder.
That thing, my whole torso and arm were bruised from.
I mean, it's just a hunk of wood.
Yeah.
No, the Mauser, like, he shot the Mauser.
I'm like, now I get why the Nazis lost.
Really?
Is it a rifle?
You mean the handgun?
The Mauser, yeah.
Is it rifle?
Yeah, I don't know enough about it.
The Luger is the handgun.
Yeah, the Luger.
Yeah.
I've always wanted one of those.
They're expensive, though.
Yeah.
But the Mauser is like, it's got a metal buttstock, kicks like crazy.
Like, that Mungrand is not that bad to shoot.
Is the Mauser semi-automatic?
No, I believe it's...
Oh, maybe.
I don't remember.
Could be a bolt action.
But it shoots 8mm Mouser.
8mm Mouser.
That's the round.
Yeah.
I can't imagine being in World War II.
Yeah.
Crazy time.
My grandfather served on the Soviet side in World War II.
He was in the Air Force and he was part of the engineering corps.
So when they took over an enemy airfield, he would come in, repair it, and get it ready for the Russian Air Force to come in.
So was he fighting in Russia during the Nazi invasion?
Yes, I believe so.
That must have been a Dutchman.
Yeah, he was in Leningrad, actually.
No shit.
Yeah.
The Battle of Leningrad?
No.
Was he in?
No, he was in Moscow.
Never mind.
I got to talk to my dad and ask him all the details.
I just don't remember.
Is that how your family wound up in Ukraine?
No.
So before.
So when the Soviet Union started forming, was it 1917?
They basically allowed Jews to come back into the cities.
Before that, they didn't allow them to live in the cities.
They were all in like little towns in the Ukraine.
So crazy story, actually.
My grandfather was almost killed as a baby.
Just for being Jewish?
Yeah, so his mom was holding him.
And some like anti-Semites went through their town and shot his mom.
So he was like, yeah, she got shot in the shoulder.
Anyways, they got the fuck out of there and moved to Moscow.
And that's where him and his brother were born.
No, sorry.
He was born in Ukraine and then they moved to Moscow.
I see.
I see.
Wow.
So he fought.
So what was it like?
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.
What was his experience after that?
Do you know?
So after the war.
In general, I don't know about that, but I know he experienced a lot of anti-Semitism.
So like he was an officer and it took, they always took double the time to promote him.
I see.
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.
Get the fuck out of here.
Yeah.
yeah yeah and then what the fuck with the i don't I don't understand the whole anti-Semitism thing.
I don't get it.
Okay, I get it in Germany.
They believed a conspiracy that the Jews were responsible for the failure of World War I. Like, I get it.
Okay, like, it's a lie, but at least it made sense.
But, like, why the fuck do just random people seem to always hate Jewish people?
Like, I didn't get it all.
They don't look any different.
Like, you don't act any.
Like, what the fuck is going on?
I don't know.
Especially the Soviet Union where no one was like religious.
They were just like part of, like my parents are as Russian as it gets.
Yeah.
Like.
Do you speak Russian?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, my parents are as Russian as it gets.
My grandma.
You speak Russian, Hebrew, English.
Spanish and Portuguese.
No shit.
How'd you learn Spanish and Portuguese?
Duolingo.
No, shit.
It worked.
Oh, yeah.
But you got to be consistent.
Like, people will do like five minutes of it like once a week and be like, man, that shit don't work.
I'm like, bro, you got to do it consistently.
You got to do it consistently.
But also like immersion.
That's huge.
So you got to learn the bass, but then you got to go immerse yourself.
You can't learn a language in a bubble.
You got to go immerse yourself.
Three years of Spanish in high school.
Yeah.
And I learned my dog.
I learned I managed a painting crew of Mexicans right after high school the summer before college.
And I learned more Spanish in the eight weeks that I managed a Mexican crew than I learned in the three years that I was in Spain.
I probably learned how to talk some shit.
Yeah, yeah.
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.
Yeah.
And they don't have places to live most of the time, right?
Yeah.
And especially if they're traveling.
And so they'll paint and they'll squat.
So we would do, we were in Champaign, Illinois, which is where the University of Illinois is.
And we paint like every apartment before all the students came for the semester.
And so they would paint and sleep in the apartment and then paint the next one and sleep in it.
And there was this fucking guy that owned these properties and he smoked like a chimney.
He was old and he had pictures of himself running marathons all over his office.
I forget his name.
A wompler maybe.
I think his name is.
Sounds like a wompler.
Anyway, he did not want Mexicans squatting on any of his properties, right?
Like, don't let those fucking Mexicans sleep in my apartment, you know?
And so he caught him with like a shower curtain and inflatable mattresses and microwaves.
He caught him.
That damn dog.
He caught him sleeping in the apartment and he called me and he was all pissed off.
He's like, get your Mexicans out.
I've already called the cops.
I remember I called Pablo who didn't speak any English.
And I was like, Pablo, I was like, no, Dormir, unless apartmentos se sientos yces.
It's like, la plecia di es minutos.
And he just goes, uh-oh.
Yeah.
Now, my Spanish would get pretty good.
I mean, my wife is Mexican, so we go, you know, we go to Chihuahua quite a bit.
And, I mean, I'm only speaking Spanish when I'm there.
Yeah.
And you can go to non-tourists.
You can do all the tenses, no problem.
Ish.
The verb conjugate has always been difficult for me, but I'm getting better at it.
The nouns are easy.
It's funny.
The nouns come first.
It's almost like you're a baby, you know, like you learn what an object is.
Yeah.
Easy.
But it's the future progressive.
Yeah.
Yeah, it gets a little funky.
But, you know, if you go outside of like the tourist areas in Mexico, nobody speaks English.
Right.
Like, unless they're super well educated.
Right.
So you have to know the language.
Brazil too.
Like, Brazil, no one speaks English.
Right.
I think Portuguese is just a non-compatible language with learning English.
Because I was like thinking about it the other day and like, why is that?
And I think the reason is because Portuguese is a very like you don't pronounce the words like you do in Spanish where there's a definite ending.
Like Bonzo, go lay down.
Everything has this soft ending.
Yeah, go under the bed, Bonzo.
So weird.
He's crazy dog.
So I think they really struggle when they have to, like, they can't fucking say my name.
No shit.
Like, hon. Hon. They can't fucking say it.
But they don't pronounce Rs in general.
Okay.
But, like, my name was, like, fucking impossible for them.
So, like, when I saw it was this weird coincidence of events.
Anyway, I started working a lot with Brazilians.
And I realized, I'm like, these assholes are never going to learn English.
Like, there's no chance.
I'm just going to have to learn Portuguese.
I'm just going to have to learn Portuguese.
And it's completely different from Spanish, right?
No, it's very simple.
I always equate it to basically deaf people speaking Spanish.
Okay.
That's what it sounds like to me.
Not a lot of continents.
Yeah, it's just like nothing is pronounced like all the way.
Like, for example, like immigration in Spanish is migraine.
Yeah.
In Portuguese, migraine.
Okay.
So it's the same word, just different ending.
Yeah, there's no end to the word.
You know what I'm saying?
So because of that, like, I was like, these guys are never going to learn English.
And they pronounce everything really funny too.
They don't like glock.
They say glocky.
Instagram.
So they add shit on it.
Yeah.
Yeah, Instagramy.
Facebooky.
So it's always fun.
But Brazil is great.
I love the people.
Everyone's super warm.
Everyone's super nice.
Food is really good.
Yeah.
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.
Cool, cool, cool.
Yeah.
So Tactical Fitness is my company.
You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, or Facebook Key.
We got a great YouTube channel too.
YouTube.
TacticalFitness.com.
Tactical FitnessAustin.
Someone already had Tactical Fitness.
I got it.
TacticalFitnessAustin.com.
You can find us.
You can find all our courses there coming up.
We do private training.
You hear that, Joe Rogan?
You hear that?
We do private training.
We do private courses.
We do like a lot of actually bachelor parties.
Contact us.
Just do like a fun range day, birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, whatever thing you want to do.
And we do tactical courses as well, military law enforcement and civilians.
We do the concealed carry course as well, if that's like what you want to do.
And we do private in-home personal training.
So there's a lot of people in and around town that go to their home and train them in fitness or in Krav Maga.
Okay.
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.
I don't know about eight million.
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.
There's a lot you have to do.
People are usually for a rude awakening when they shoot a handgun for the first time.
It's like it's difficult.
Right.
It's difficult.
So, so.
Well, anyway, dude, it was great to have you.
Yeah.
I appreciate you coming on.
And good luck with Tactical Fitness.
Thank you.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
