Hi all,
A friend has forwarded me this thread and I thought I’d share the true story as many here seem interested. Warning: There is a deep political issue at bay here; up until very recently I never paid attention to politics much but I do have several people very close to me who are Palestinian who have had people close to them (and I) extremely effected by the War in Gaza and this does “drama” does revolve closely around that, so I do apologise in advance but context is required.
Before I continue, I’d genuinely like to apologise to people who visit this page who’ve taken a true hate to the effort and content I’ve put out over the years. I never set out to create content people would hate and at least personally, if I come across a content creator I don’t enjoy, I simply stop watching/listening and find something I do enjoy. I guess I’m a little confused as to why there seems to be a love for hating on people and the effort to ruin their entire career/image without understanding a true situation even comes to mind, it’s not something I subscribe to. It sounds like a simple suggestion but maybe search for something you enjoy watching and support them; it’s a waste of time hating on people.
Story: Several months ago we had a client at our coaching company named Itai. Upon receiving news that a close connection had been placed in Israeli prison and was being tortured for absolutely no reason, I began sharing some instagram stories displaying my distaste for the IDF (Israel Defense Force) and the Israel Government who were ordering these actions. Itai has recently worked with (unclear if he still do) the Israel Defense Force.
It’s worth noting, in case you haven’t paid attention, that the IDF and Israeli Gov have ordered the killing of Aid Workers, United Nations Staff, They’ve pretended to be aid workers entering Gaza reading to hand out desperately needed aid (food/water) and instead began spraying the desparate displaced crowd with bullets killing hundreds at a time. The IDF have continually forcibly displaced thousands of innocent Palestinians and told them to head to ‘safe zones” that they shortly after heavily bomb (this happens almost weekly) so I do feel like my distaste is warranted. I never shared any true issue with Jews. (I did warn you there is a political twist to this “drama”).
Itai abruptly quit our coaching group, which is understandable but he then began accusing staff of supporting a terrorist organisation and refused to abide by our 1 month notice cancellation policy. Itai was very agressive, assumed me of using ChatGPT to make training plans and I my response included the quotes “You may be able to make up the rules where you live, but you don’t make up the rules in our business.” and “Yes we do use Chat GPT to improve our grammar/structure language with group emails.
Randomly, 2 months later Itai has edited my email in an extraordinary fashion and sent it to some Israeli athletes who have not only shared my edited email (it takes a few strokes of a keyboard to edit an email) but has then photoshopped a bunch of conversation that never occurred. Itai works in IT and is, from what I understand, familiar with AI tools and there are many AI tools now where you can create a fake conversation. These fake conversations have been shared and dumped into this google drive folder in an attempt to cancel me and Sweat Elite. I have requested with the owner of the google drive doc and with Itai if I can add in screenshots of the actual email and share the DM threads (mostly entirely empty) of what’s been shared here - but they have not accepted the request.
I welcome anyone to email us:
for the original emails/threads if you would like to see them, it’s quite a different story.
So to be clear- yes I’ve expressed quite strong opinions against the IDF and the Israeli Government; it’s a true shame some people have immediately linked with with hating jews. It’s bizarre to me honestly. Especially given it’s quite easy to read Aljazeera and notice how many people have been displaced and killed by the IDF, not only since October last year but for years prior. The most bizarre thing to me though is people will seemingly get so offended by some WORDS (true or not) but ignore not care for the murdering of tens of thousands of innocent human beings.
I’ve never understand this random hate for people in this sport that have a voice, I know a few other small media companies like us have had severe hate directed at them before to the point that they’ve quit- what’s the point of this? I know this message won’t change this trajectory of cancel culture but it’s really damaging for any sport. If people are putting in effort to create content people can learn from, why have such an issue with them? Just watch something else.