An American firearms academy founded by an Israeli settler IDF veteran is actively recruiting British Jews for fully funded free combat training, inviting them to travel to the US for instruction in Israeli military shooting techniques to fight against “fanatical Islamic extremists.”
Cherev Gidon Israeli Tactical Training Academy, based in Pennsylvania, has published a series of posts on LinkedIn explicitly targeting British Jews, offering free tactical firearms training and framing it as a response to “Islamic terrorism.”
The academy’s founder and director, Yonatan Stern, has also published a full article in Firearms News – one of America’s largest gun publications – where he initially made the offer to train British Jews following the Manchester synagogue attack last October.
The LinkedIn posts, published approximately one month ago, claimed that the recruitment drive has already seen numerous British Jews travel to the U.S for firearms training.
“Since the Islamic stabbing attack targeting Jews in Golders Green on April 29th, dozens of British Jews have signed up for our FREE defensive firearms training program,” the academy stated in a LinkedIn post.
Free training for British Jews
It named specific UK locations from which volunteers had come: “Those taking the training are members of volunteer security teams protecting Jewish communities in Golders Green, Hendon, and Stamford Hill, alongside several volunteers from Manchester and Leeds.”
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The posts go further, detailing the weapons being used in the training. “The training is taking place primarily using bolt-action military rifles, as well as on pump-action shotguns and .22 caliber semi-automatic rifles including AR-15s,” the academy stated.
It also disclosed that a separate group had travelled from Northern Ireland: “We also have a team of volunteers coming in from Belfast in Northern Ireland for handgun training who are Christian Zionists and already hold handgun licenses. These volunteers will be protecting Synagogues and Jewish events throughout Ulster.”
Cherev Gidon also revealed that the travel costs for these volunteers had been covered by members of the British Jewish community. “We would like to thank those in the London and Manchester Jewish communities who sponsored the flights and other travel expenses of these volunteers,” the post read.
The framing of the recruitment campaign is explicitly framed as a Jewish defence against “Islamic fanaticism”.
“British Jews are under attack by fanatical Islamic extremists that were allowed to invade the UK en-masse over the last several decades by successive British governments,” the academy wrote. “So, we decided to do something about it. We are encouraging and empowering British Jews to defy the rules prohibiting armed self-defense in the UK.”
In his Firearms News article, Stern was also careful when addressing the legal risks posed to British Jews travelling abroad for such training.
“It goes without saying that anyone even mentioning the idea of self-defense as a reason for applying for a firearm certificate will have it automatically denied, and anyone actually using a firearm for self-defense in Britain will almost undoubtedly face criminal prosecution,” he wrote. His response: “It’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.”
Anti-Muslim immigrant rhetoric
Stern’s wider commentary on the situation of British Jews “under attack” also included many inflammatory statements. He described the country as having been made vulnerable by what he called “many years of open borders with mass Islamic immigration” and characterised Muslims as “Islamic invaders, hell-bent on erasing Britain’s European heritage, and replacing it with an Islamic caliphate ruled by Sharia law.”
In a separate LinkedIn post, he shared an image stating “Just 6 pounds of Sterling in the hands of British girls would end all UK rape gangs. Pity their government sides with criminals.”
Cherev Gidon describes itself as America’s premier Israeli firearms training school, offering courses ranging from basic firearms safety to advanced close-quarters combat. Its stated goal is for every synagogue to have “an armed Jew ready to defend it.”
Israeli founder
Stern founded the academy approximately a decade ago. He is a former IDF soldier and Israeli police volunteer who grew up in Kiryat Arba, a hardline Israeli settlement adjacent to Hebron in the occupied West Bank. He was 16 when the Second Intifada began and spent the next seven years in the area.
“You saw gun battles day after day, you saw people being hit,” he said in an interview piece for Jewish media. He moved to the United States in 2007, studied government and counter-terrorism, and founded the academy several years later.
Stern has been explicit on the record about the limits of his advocacy. When asked whether American Muslims should have the same right to arm and defend their mosques, he said: “If they were peaceful people yes, but the reality is that they, through their own actions, are showing us that they are not a peaceful people for the most part.”
