In the late 2010s, Noam Shuster Eliassi was working at the United Nations, the latest step in a lifelong effort to build peace between Israelis and Palestinians, when she had an epiphany. In Ukraine, a Jewish comedian named Volodymyr Zelenskyy had made the improbable leap from sitcom about accidentally becoming president to actually becoming president. Perhaps, if she were to take her political career seriously, she should start writing jokes.<\/p>\n
It worked. As an Israeli Jew fluent in Hebrew, Arabic and English, Shuster Eliassi could nimbly weave between different audiences, and what started as short comedic videos on social media soon became an invitation from Harvard to develop a full-on stand-up routine skewering the idea of coexistence as it\u2019s often used in the Israeli-Palestinian context. The show would riff on her upbringing in one of the only joint Israeli-Palestinian communities in the country, threading a fine needle with self-deprecating humor and an activist\u2019s edge. The aim, she told the Guardian, was to \u201cunpack\u201d the idea of coexistence, \u201cand say, like, \u2018this is how I grew up, there are so many funny kumbayah moments, and I propose something else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That was in 2019. By the time Shuster Eliassi took the stage in Montreal in September of last year, to perform the full routine before a documentary crew, the idea of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians seemed even more vastly and horrifically remote. After an affable routine ranging from her asking Palestinian neighbors for kebabs on Israeli independence day (\u201cno agenda, just tahini!\u201d) to her Jewish mother meddling in her dating life, Shuster Eliassi addressed the elephant in the room. It used to be the occupation, she says. \u201cNow, the elephant in the room is genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n
That moral clarity \u2013 the insistence on calling out that elephant in the room, through disarming humor and radical frankness \u2013 forms the backbone of Coexistence, My Ass!, a magnetic new documentary, directed by Amber Fares, that takes its name from Shuster Eliassi\u2019s trilingual one-woman show. The film, shot over five seismic years in the US and Israel, chronicles both the development of Shuster Eliassi\u2019s singular comedy, rooted in a too-rare portrait of Arab-Israeli friendship, and the stunning collapse of any near-term hope for real coexistence in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks and Israel\u2019s retaliatory destruction of Gaza, killing over 71,000 Palestinians. \u201cI thought the film was going to be about [Noam] trying to be a comedian in the US, and probably going to university campuses in the year of an election,\u201d said Fares. \u201cAnd the film just took an entirely different turn.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
First it was Covid, which forced Shuster Eliassi to leave Harvard for Israel, where she was quarantined with a mixed group of Arabs and Israelis that recalled her unusual upbringing in Neve Shalom \/ Wahat as-Salam (\u201cOasis of Peace\u201d). The daughter of an Iranian-Jewish mother and a Romanian Ashkenazi Jewish father \u2013 \u201cwoke, progressive leftists\u201d who \u201cbelieved Israelis and Palestinians deserve the same equal human rights\u201d, she says with faux disbelief in her routine \u2013 Shuster Eliassi grew up as a literal \u201cposter child for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process\u201d. She socialized with Palestinian neighbors, learned Arabic from Palestinian educators and represented the idea of peace to numerous celebrities who visited the village; the film includes a clip of Shuster Eliassi and her Palestinian best friend Ranin getting a shout out from Jane Fonda.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents saw moving here as a way to say \u2018we\u2019re not just joining a seminar or a dialogue group, we want to live in this alternative way.\u2019 As a political statement, not just a kumbayah thing,\u201d Shuster Eliassi said. \u201cThere was always a sense of doing \u2013 not just talking about the alternative, but with your individual choices, doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s mocking premise \u2013 Coexistence, My Ass! (\u201clet\u2019s start with my ass,\u201d she jokes, lest you have your guard up) \u2013 drew from frustration with the sloganeering of peace: the celebrity visits, the lip service, the lack of real reckoning with how true coexistence cannot coexist with occupation. \u201cIt has been so frustrating to always see this notion of coexistence used repeatedly as a nice decoration,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like how Trump can come here and say that he is making peace \u2013 these are words. Nobody is \u2018against\u2019 coexistence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to me, it was so clear that we will only be able to taste [coexistence] after we talk about the root of the problem and we act on it, especially as Israeli Jews that have privilege and the responsibility to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film follows Shuster Eliassi as she attempts to keep her increasing media presence \u2013 post-Covid, she secures a regular gig on a TV show; a music video mocking Arab countries selling out Palestine, called \u201cDubai Dubai\u201d, goes viral \u2013 in line with her principles, particularly as the Israeli comedy scene turns away from discussion of the occupation. Some attempts to thread the needle fall flat; others soar (\u201cDon\u2019t worry, I\u2019m only going to be here for seven minutes, not 70 years,\u201d she tells a Palestinian audience to uproarious laughs). \u201cSome comedians in Israel are like, \u2018oh here\u2019s Noam, she\u2019s the one who talks about the occupation \u2013 why can\u2019t you do, like, Tinder jokes and stuff?\u2019\u201d she said. At a pro-democracy protest against corruption in Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government, Shuster Eliassi repeatedly asks liberal Israelis whether they see the protests as at all connected to Palestine. Most say no.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause Israelis were never confronted with decades of illegal occupation and actually controlling Palestinian people \u2013 Israelis were never confronted with what it\u2019s actually doing to the moral fabric of our society, and what it means that our society is so hyper-militarized,\u201d said Shuster Eliassi of that common response. \u201cEveryone takes a role in the escalation of the dehumanization of Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she tells it, on 6 October 2023, Shuster Eliassi finally achieved her mother\u2019s dream of bringing home a new boyfriend. The next day, nothing was ever the same. The documentary shies away from showing footage of the slaughter on 7 October, or the mass killings in Gaza \u2013 a \u201cvery conscious decision\u201d, said Fares. \u201cWe felt that by the time this film came out, that footage would been seen and seen and overseen.\u201d Instead, it cuts to Shuster Eliassi at the funeral of longtime peace activist Vivian Silver, who was killed<\/a> in the attacks, then her despair at the carnage in Gaza, the escalation of her protests and the feverish pitch of social media commentary across languages.<\/p>\n Noam Shuster Eliassi in Coexistence, My Ass! Photograph: Philippe Bellaiche<\/p>\n In the intervening two years, Shuster Eliassi has performed less in her home country, owing in part to lack of audience, in part to dwindling venues willing to book her, and in part because she\u2019s now expecting her first child. \u201cA lot of comedians who\u2019ve continued doing comedy during this time \u2013 I don\u2019t want to demonize all of them, but I\u2019ve had a huge heartbreak,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like American comedians who contributed to the re-election of Trump. You\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my god, this is how you\u2019re using this tool that was designed to fight against fascism?\u2019 It\u2019s the same thing, when I see comedians making fun of starving Gazans on stage or using comedy to do Israeli propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n She has fared better outside the country, where Coexistence, My Ass! has mirrored her routine\u2019s ability to invite in and challenge diverse audiences without alienating them. An independent release<\/a> without major backers, the film premiered at Sundance and opened the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, in a co-presentation with the Arab Film & Media Institute, offering a different but still sharp angle on the conflict. Still, Shuster Eliassi notes, \u201ca lot of what we\u2019re saying in this film, Palestinians have been saying for a really long time. And I say to the audiences, that if they feel relieved or reassured because they hear it from an Israeli Jew \u2013 why don\u2019t you believe Palestinians? Why do you need an Israeli Jewish character to [believe]?\u201d<\/p>\n