CULTURE CURRENT-Noam Shuster Eliassi on why humor hits harder than diplomacy

By Yasmeen Serhan

Aug 21 - "I’m only staying for seven minutes, not 70 years,” Noam Shuster Eliassi told an audience at the Palestine Comedy Festival in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in 2019, to laughter and applause. But that wasn’t the end of the bit.

“By the way, this is Amer’s joke, I stole it,” she continued, referencing the festival’s founder, Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr. “It’s mine now, God promised it to me!”

Few Israeli comedians have resonated as deeply with the Arab world as Shuster Eliassi, whose fluent Arabic and biting critiques of Israel’s decades-long military occupation and its normalization deals with Gulf states have earned her viral fame. But as her career has progressed, the situation in the region has worsened — an evolution captured in the forthcoming documentary “Coexistence, My Ass!,” which follows Shuster Eliassi over a five-year period as she develops a comedy show of the same name. Although the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January to widespread acclaim, it hasn’t found a U.S. distributor, says its Lebanese-Canadian director Amber Fares — an issue that similarly dogged the Oscar-winning Palestinian-Israeli documentary “No Other Land.” It will be shown in select U.S. theaters beginning Oct. 29.

Speaking with Reuters from her hometown in the bilingual Jewish-Arab village of Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom, Shuster Eliassi discusses her disillusionment with the peace industry, her decision to trade her diplomacy work at the United Nations - she was a co-director of the Israel programme at Interpeace, a peacebuilding organisation set up by the UN before it was disbanded in 2017 - for satire, and the power of comedy to confront the powerful.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Noam, you have a fascinating confluence of identities. How do you introduce yourself to your audience?

It's an interesting time to introduce myself! But I'm Jewish. I'm a comedian, I'm an activist. I was born in Israel. My mother was born in Iran. My dad was born in Jerusalem, he’s the son of Holocaust survivors. And my parents gave me a huge gift at the age of seven. We moved to a village called Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom, which is the "Oasis of Peace" in English. Every time I type "Neve Shalom" on my iPhone, it auto-corrects to “Never Shalom.” (laughs)

That’s foreboding! Why did your family choose to move there?

It is the only place where Jews and Palestinians live together by choice. The families that moved here, including my parents, wanted to pose an alternative to the injustice and inequality that exists outside and to say we are families who are living together based on equality and justice and acknowledgement. I grew up on both narratives: I grew up knowing that Israeli Independence Day, for my (Palestinian) best friends ... it’s their catastrophe day. To look into that, and to learn what does it mean that my best friend’s grandmother lost everything in ‘48 and became refugees ... few Israelis get to even be exposed to a glimpse of Palestinian identity.

On the one hand, I'm very cynical about the peace industry and I'm very cynical about the way that I grew up. On the other hand, this place always deals with reality. There was always a very heightened political awareness here. When the time came for me to start getting the [draft] letters from the army, I was already so aware of what the army is doing and what the occupation means to the moral fabric of our society, what it means to the suffering of Palestinians, many of (whom) are my neighbors and have families in the West Bank and in Gaza.

What is it like living there these days?

Leading up to October 2023, (the situation) was already becoming so much worse and it became clear to me that this community might be the only place where I can live and give my children the opportunity to have an education with Palestinians, to learn Arabic. Unfortunately, things had to get so extreme everywhere in order for me to realize that (despite) how imperfect it is here, at least there is a sincere discussion here. At least my Palestinian neighbors can speak here. Not outside. They are risking arrest and threats and violence.

You joke about how kids in your village were groomed to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And, fittingly, you went from welcoming dignitaries like Hillary Clinton and the Dalai Lama to the village to working for the United Nations. When did you realize that comedy might be more effective than diplomacy?

Creativity and being the funny one and the storyteller, it always existed, even when I was in the U.N. Stand-up has always been my favorite craft. But what happened is I was in charge (of) an under-the-radar mission that was supposed to speak to Israelis that are not part of the peace choir. I was in charge of speaking to large populations with a lot of influence that are considered extremists or future potential spoilers of peace. All the political analysis showed that the biggest demographic that is going to be the most significant politically to influence what is happening is the religious nationalist camp.

The biggest thing the U.N. was so scared about was (working with) the religious nationalist community because it means breaking the status quo; it means working with Jewish Israelis beyond the Green Line (in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories). We said: If you want to influence something, we have to work with those influential religious leaders from the hardcore religious Zionist communities. And I think that as soon as we tried to do that, it really shook the system and it really scared (it).

Today, when we look at all these countries coming out and saying, "We will recognize a Palestinian state," it is, again, just a tool that they're taking from their old-school toolkit without providing any sustainable solutions or answers to Palestinians who are displaced, who are starved, who are suffering from Israel's genocide. They're just picking up an old-school tool from the diplomatic nothing box they have. We're seeing this replicated again and again. And I think that when, after so many years in the U.N., when I was hit hard in the face with saying, “No, we're not going to work with the actual problem, go back to working with those nice rabbis that are a bit leftist anyways,” then I was like, no, this is not where I want to be.

In my comedy, I say that I left the U.N., but to be honest, they fired me. (laughs)

With comedy, I suppose you get to speak to everyone. How do different audiences respond to your work?

The wonderful thing about this creative tool (is) I didn't have to decide at every point which language am I using, which audience am I targeting. I can make a viral joke about normalization with the Gulf countries and then the day after, I can perform in an Israeli city (where) Netanyahu voters get up in the middle of the show and start yelling at me. That's the thing with comedy — it has no boundaries.

When I started doing comedy, I was writing jokes in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and I was performing everywhere. And then I got a call — you remember the scene with Amer Zahr at the Palestine Comedy Festival? That was one of the moments where I was like, "Oh my God, this is why I started doing this." In what U.N. capacity would I have had the opportunity to be on stage in Sheikh Jarrah, a very politically charged spot, and to create a connection with Palestinians based on my political comedy and satire? No dialogue group, no U.N. envoy, can create a moment like this.

In the film, we’re shown a clip of you delivering a speech in which you express concern about what Israel’s military occupation is doing to the moral fabric of the country. Do you have similar fears about the impact the ongoing destruction of Gaza — what many now describe as genocide — stands to have on it?

We are way beyond the point of me being worried about the moral fabric of Israeli society. You're referring to a video that was 10 years ago, where the writing was on the wall and it was clear that the normalizing of the occupation, of the daily uprooting of Palestinians, of the blockade that already existed in Gaza, of the settlers' violence, of the checkpoints, of everything that has to do with the normalized day-to-day reality of occupation — the fact that we've normalized it for so many years, that was the big warning. Now, we are basically seeing the consequences of it, and we are seeing how the Holocaust education that we received throughout those years, instead of making us so sensitive to it and fighting against it and saying "never again is now, and (for) everyone," we have used the lessons as justifications to do it to other people. And so we are way, way, way beyond me being worried about the moral fabric of Israeli society. That ship has sailed; the train has crashed.

What worries me the most is that people are aware of what is happening in Gaza, but they have found a set of excuses and denials in order for them to live in peace with what is happening ... to tell ourselves every single excuse except admitting the truth.

What are you hoping audiences take away from this film?

I hope the audiences laugh and cry and think and act. The filmmakers have done such a great job in giving the tools and the vocabulary to have better conversations and better actions as well.

Unfortunately, this world is racist and even though Palestinians have been filming themselves going through a genocide for almost two years, I still meet audiences (for whom) it is easier for them to hear it from an Israeli Jew rather than hearing it from Palestinians. And so for this fraction of people that watch this film and find it easier to hear it from an Israeli Jew, I want it to be a warning sign for them and to go back home and do their homework.