Yesterday i finally got to actually meet and train with Mike Lee Kanerek in West Chester Pa at the reginional Haganah headquarters there and Mike Lee was there and definitely impressed me with his skill and knowledge. I would highly recommend anyone who is not yet a believer, if they should get a chance to attend one of his haganah seminars.. It was 5 hours long starting with a grueling work-out (warm up)and 4 hours of tactics from empty hand to gun and knife threats. I was amazed at how many Haganah/FIGHT/Krav Maga students were there and everyone was very helpful and we worked as a great team.
Just thought I'd share.

Anybody else from the forum there?

Mike from the school went. Sean O'Hanelin, Joe Zink and john and a few others from the school went up but not sure about anyone else on the forums here. I don"t know that many people on here lol. I can send you a pic of us with Mike Lee Kanerek.

Out of interest, what are the major differences you noticed between Hagannah and Krav? Someone told me once that it was like Krav but 'softer', and I'm wondering if that is accurate or not?

--Chris

I certainly don't think Haganah is "softer" by any means. The main difference is as far as the empty hand goes, Haganah is more structured and is designed to bring you to a "point of reference" from which you can reach an "objective" such as cripple, terminate or subdue. Where Krav tends to be more of get an attacker into a position where you can just continue to strike until the threat is no longer a threat. Both have advantages. The gun disarms are I think a little better and safer to do in Haganah than KM and the same goes for defending against knife threats. Defense against actual knife attacks are based on generic attacks with both systems, however, I know part of the overall Haganah curriculum involves training in Israeli tactical knife fighting (ITK) I haven't been exposed to that in KM.
Some of my former fellow KM studens felt that Krav was more "free flowing" where haganah being more structured was strange to them, however the problem was, they didn't take at least the FIGHT course long enough in my opinion to be able to say that one was better than the other.