THE GROUP'S EFFORTS did wind up making international headlines, but not the way anyone intended. After the two-and-a-half-hour concert, after the autographs, after holing up in the backstage VIP room for 45 minutes while security guards figured out a way for Kelly to escape, a few of the gang went to a nightclub, where Kelly met Bar Refaeli, an Israeli model and ex-girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio. Late that night outside his hotel, Kelly had a run-in with paparazzi when he grabbed an Israeli photographer's camera and got pushed, and a shoving match broke out. He spent the rest of the night at the police station.

The next morning, Saturday, everyone was spent. "I'm not even sure if I could tell you what I got out of it," Kelly told me later. "It was about 36 hours of emotional, mental overload. I didn't at all expect it to get that out of hand." He laughed. "But when there's that much energy around something, it has a lot of power in it. I'm not going back tomorrow, but I know I'll go back."

Kelly had agreed to delay his departure until Saturday night to meet with a small group of Arab surfers in Jaffe, a much less ritzy part of Tel Aviv, far from the cameras and glitz of Herzliya. A group of half a dozen boys as young as nine came out to take pictures. Twelve-year-old Mohammed gave Kelly a trophy of appreciation from the community, as well as a Syrian kaffiyeh, a black-and-white-checked scarf.

"Thank you so much for this," Kelly said, moved. "I'm sincerely honored."

"I've just been surfing for one month," Mohammed said in perfect English. "I was on the Internet and saw Kelly Slater and his videos. My friends taught me to surf. I think we can make peace when we go with our friends. It makes life friendly."

Nearby stood an older surfer in his thirties, the kids' mentor. "It's a good idea using surfing as a bridge between Israelis and Palestinians," he said. "My worry is that it will end on the beach. Outside the waters there is a lot of racism here, segregation." But just seeing Slater had given them a lift. "When I told the guys Kelly Slater was Syrian," he continued, "it was like ‘What? It can't be! An Arab guy that made it in the big world.' It gives hope to people."

After the snapshots, the boys from Jaffe gleefully paddled out into the puny two-to-three-foot waves. There were no logos, no paparazzi, no overzealous fans. They jumped onto their shortboards—a few emblazoned with the Palestinian flag or icons of martyrs—mimicking the moves they'd seen in videos of their world-famous Arab brother, who was standing on the beach.

For Doc Paskowitz, that day in the waves washed away a lot of disappointment and frustration. "You can't imagine the delight I had with those boys," he told me later by phone from California. "It just made me feel so proud and so big. To have your enemy, so to speak, shake your hand and hug you—that's a great medal to wear on your chest."