THIS IS A STORY ABOUT SURFING, although very little surfing actually occurs. It starts more than half a century ago, in 1946, when a young Jewish surfer from Galveston, Texas, graduated from Stanford University's medical school and became a general practitioner. A dozen years, two failed marriages, and three kids later, Dorian Paskowitz married Juliette, a six-foot Mexican opera singer he met in a bar on Catalina Island. They would go on to raise nine children, including Doc's three, traveling in an 82-foot camper from surf break to surf break, homeschooling the kids and working at medical clinics when money was tight. Paskowitz became a legend in the surf world. One of the first to develop the idea of instructive camps, in 1972 he opened the Paskowitz Surf Camp in San Onofre, California, which is now run by his son Israel.

In 1956, shortly before marrying Juliette, Doc decided he needed to support the young Israeli state—by volunteering in the war against Egypt over the Suez Canal. The Israel Defense Forces rebuffed him, but the beachgoers didn't. He spent the better part of a year traveling to the front lines as a civilian and surfing the small Mediterranean waves, introducing the sport to Israel. He left his wooden longboard behind, along with a small, fervent following. Fifty years later, the beaches are dotted with both teenagers and middle-agers toting boards, and most major surf companies distribute merchandise here.

As Doc is fond of pointing out, "If you can surf together, you can live together." After traveling back to Israel in 2000, 2003, and 2006 to visit friends and bring surfboards, he returned last summer with David, visiting both the beaches of Tel Aviv and the border crossing at the Gaza Strip. There he found Palestinian surfers making do with outdated, makeshift equipment, thanks to the near-total economic and social isolation of an area increasingly controlled by the Islamist political movement Hamas.

The idea for Surfing for Peace had grown over several years, from a one-off concert in Hawaii to, after the 2006 visit, clinics in Israel and Gaza. Once the Tel Aviv concert was scheduled, one of the first people Doc approached was Kelly Slater. He'd known the surfer since the late seventies, when the Paskowitzes had parked their camper in the Slater driveway during visits to Cocoa Beach, Florida. "You should come to Israel," he said—teach some kids, play some music. When Kelly told him about his Syrian ancestors, Doc nearly flipped.

"That's perfect!" he told Kelly. "You're an Arab and I'm a Jew. We're supposed to hate each other and we love each other!"

Of course, that's about as far as the planning progressed. And now here was Doc in Israel, his heart set on creating a legacy. "I have congestive heart failure and recently had a hip replacement," he told me one day in Tel Aviv. "Making this happen will be one of the greatest things I do in my life."