Instagram Dispute

Dear Friends, 

On July 25th, Ibrahim Arafat, a former participant in our programming, posted the above content on his personal Instagram page, sharing it with over 4000 followers.  Below is our response to his false allegations.  

Hi, everyone.  My name is Matt Olsen and I founded the Gaza Surf Club in 2008. I would like a chance to address Ibrahim Arafat’s claims that he posted regarding the Gaza Surf Club Instagram page. Ibrahim chose to express his concerns to his IG audience instead of calling me to talk about this in person so I will address it in public as well.  I would like to start with the clarification that Ibrahim has never been part of the team that manages the Gaza Surf Club project.  He was involved in the early years of the project as a program participant.  In 2014 we began a conversation with Ibrahim about a possible joint venture  to build a Clubhouse in Gaza for the Surf Club and renting a space from his family for that purpose.  In 2015 Ibrahim traveled to Hawaii at the invitation of Explore Corps, the parent charity organization of the Gaza Surf Club.  The goal of that trip, which was partially documented in the film Gaza Surf Club, was for Ibrahim to learn about the diverse approaches and actors in the surf industry and within surf culture so he could return to Gaza and launch the joint venture with us to construct a facility that was part Clubhouse and part surf shop.  Rather than returning to Gaza, Ibrahim moved to Houston, Texas. and never returned to Gaza.  At the time we understood his decision, though we were disappointed that we had been misled and that all our efforts on the Clubhouse project had been for nothing.  Instead, Ibrahim remained in the U.S. and requested asylum on the fraudulent claim that participating in our program had make it unsafe for him to return home to Gaza.  At that point he had nothing more to do with the project other than having been a former project participant.  

Despite this, it is correct that Ibrahim started the Gaza Surf Club Instagram page in 2018.  The team behind the Gaza Surf Club project had intentionally chosen to not start a page because  we were trying to encourage the surfers in Gaza to take over the Gaza Surf Club project in its entirety, which included establishing an Instagram page themselves.  Turning this project into a Club owned and operated by the surfers in Gaza has always been our goal.  Ibrahim knew this.  But in 2018 I was scrolling through Instagram and I found a page using the project name and logo without permission. I called Ibrahim and confirmed that he had started it.  I asked him to either close the page, change the name or give it over to Explore Corps, the owners of the Gaza Surf Club project, since it used the project's name and logo.  In the end, we agreed that he could be a content moderator on the page but that the content of the page would be determined by Explore Corps, under which the Gaza Surf Club project operates.  (Explore Corps is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in the United States.)  

This arrangement worked fine until the war began in October. Ibrahim then began posting content to the page without permission, much of which came from unreliable sources that had nothing to do with the community of surfers in Gaza or the project.  He used the Gaza Surf Club’s IG messaging account to engage in political debate and arguments with our professional contacts, without identifying that it was him speaking.  The professional fallout from this was extreme and we are still working on rebuilding relationships that he damaged.  But because of the original architecture of this IG page, we were not able to remove him as a moderator.  He apologized for his actions and we thought that he finally understood our approach.

Then, a few weeks ago, our Instagram page was apparently hacked and we lost control of it.  While trying to recover the page, it became clear that Ibrahim had locked us out of the page and that he continues to control the @gazasurfclub account.  We have therefore lost access to the most important tool we have for directing potential supporters to the surfers' personal IG pages and their fundraisers.  In his recent post Ibrahim claimed the page had been hacked and then says “If we are able to get it back, it will not be under or affiliated with the Gaza Surf Club anymore”.  Here he is stating his intention to take over the page and its audience and post whatever he wants on it.  He will have coincidentally "recovered" the page four weeks after it was allegedly hacked.  He is now defrauding us for the second time and is causing  damage to this project, its reputation and our friends in Gaza who we are attempting to support.

So let me address his claims about the page and its content. First of all, we are not a random bunch of surfers trying to help our friends in Gaza.  This project is part of a registered non-profit organization that operates with professional standards and procedures.  In order to operate projects in places like Gaza, which is closed off to all but the largest international AID organizations, we maintain professional relationships with individuals and organizations  in Gaza, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Amman, Cairo and Washington D.C.  Our relationships and our professionalism are the reason why we are able to operate projects where others are not.  That same level of professionalism applies to the content that we post.  Our goal is to tell the story of the surfers in Gaza and of our project, not to tell the news, not to share content that is unrelated to our project and not to raise funds off of the backs of our friends in Gaza.  

The Gaza Surf Club is a project managed by professionals who are all volunteers.  We do not engage in active fundraising and do not send out emails soliciting support.  Our yearly operating budget is usually around $400 in total for this project.  On average we receive less than half that amount in donations each year and we make up the difference by selling a few t-shirts and paying the difference out of our own pockets.  We only post about fundraising when we have a goal that we can clearly define to both the donors and the surfers. 

For example, during the war we have launched a Surfer Relief Fund to help award support grants to surfers in Gaza.  To date we have raised $2499.36 in that fund and have paid out $2500 to Gaza surfers.  Our support page is clear about what different donation options are used for and our system is fully transparent.  Pleasing donors has never been a concern of ours and Ibrahim’s claim is blatantly false.  

What we have explained to Ibrahim on numerous occasions is that we do have to consider our professional relationships, professional standards and our legal standing in the United States when determining content.  Therefore, we do not share content from people we do not know.  We do not share content that includes hateful speech.  We do not share content without context, as you can see by our lengthy text descriptions that accompany our posts.  We do not advertise events that we are not directly involved in.  These are professional standards and have nothing to do with donors.  We do this because we are professionals and because our goal is still, after all these years, to turn the Club into a formal sporting association in Palestine that is locally owned and operated by the surfers themselves.  In order to do so we maintain the professional standards expected of a formal, national sporting association, and until that formal association is formed, we also abide by the standards of an organization operating under U.S. law.    

Finally, I want to make it clear that Ibrahim was never told that he could not share content from Gaza because he is in the U.S.  Why would we say that?  Most of us working on this project are in the U.S.  But he was told that content originating in Gaza does not automatically qualify to be featured on our page.  Our page is not lacking in content from Gaza, nor does it avoid telling the story of Ibrahim's family during the war.  We have shared multiple posts on our page about his family, including stories of tragedy and survival.  We have shared his fundraiser, just as we have shared the fundraisers of the other surfers that we are in touch with.  We have provided updates about our project participants in Gaza since the war began.  But apparently Ibrahim feels like we have not done enough because we will not share everything we see on Instagram that is related to Gaza and this terrible war.  Please look at our content on our disputed Instagram page @gazasurfclub and decide for yourself.  While you are there you can also visit Ibrahim’s Instagram page which has exactly three posts related to the war.  But he claims that we are not doing enough.  

The difference is that we are committed to creating our own content.  We post accurate, verified content directly related to our friends in Gaza. All of our content is our own, either created by us or by our project participants in Gaza and used with their permission.  Sharing content that others post is not how we operate.  Hitting the “share” button a hundred times a day is not how we plan on helping the surfers in Gaza.  I understand that others will take a different approach and they are welcome to.  Many of our supporters have changed their IG pages to focus entirely on the Palestinian struggle for self determination.  We are not ignoring this issue just like we are not ignoring the war, but we are choosing to keep our focus on the surfers themselves.  This project has always been about them and supporting their efforts to live and surf in a very difficult corner of the world.  Any suggestions that our motives lie elsewhere are offensive and false. 

Thank you for taking the time to understand our approach and position. I apologize for the length of this explanation but I wanted to make our position clear.  I would also like to apologize for the loss of our Instagram page, for which I take responsibility.  I should have demanded that Ibrahim close the page as soon as I discovered that he was using our name and logo without permission.  I was naive to think that the solution that we reached, which left him with access to the page's settings and controls, was  acceptable.  In doing so I left the page vulnerable to exactly this outcome, which has let down our supporters, our staff and most importantly, our friends in Gaza.

Thanks for listening and for your support.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you have.  You can reach me on the contact page at www.gazasurfclub.com/contact

Best Regards,

Matt Olsen

P.S.  Please remember that we no longer control the Instagram page @gazasurfclub.  I hope that Ibrahim will see his error and return the page to us but it appears unlikely.  It would help us if you would unfollow the old page and follow our new Instagram page @gazasurfclubofficial.  Please be patient while we rebuild the page and try to bring it up to date.  Thanks again.