{"id":46553,"date":"2025-04-25T01:46:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T08:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=46553"},"modified":"2025-04-24T18:34:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:34:49","slug":"an-almost-great-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/an-almost-great-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"An almost great movie\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coexistence, My Ass! follows Israeli activist and comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi as she develops her show of the same name. <\/i>(photo from DOXA)<\/i><\/p>\n

Coexistence, My Ass!<\/i>, directed and produced by Amber Fares, is almost a great documentary. But it fails to ask at least two key questions that would have made for a more in-depth portrayal of an interesting and complex human being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coexistence, My Ass!<\/i>, whose May 4 screening at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival already has sold out, is about comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi, who was born in Wahat Al-Salam \/ Neve Shalom \/ Oasis of Peace, a village in which Jewish and Palestinian Israelis have chosen to live together. It has been considered a model of coexistence and\u00a0 <\/span>Shuster Eliassi grew up amid the idealism it represented, and speaks Arabic fluently. She and her best friend (to this day), Ranin, a Palestinian Israeli living in Oasis of Peace, were among the kids trotted out as the generation who would bring peace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shuster Eliassi\u2019s mother is Jewish Iranian and her father is Jewish Romanian. The couple met in high school (in what country is not revealed), so basically grew up together. They decided to live in Oasis of Peace and became, says Shuster Eliassi in her act, what most Israelis love to hate most: woke, progressive leftists. \u201cThey believe in the radical idea that Israelis and Palestinians deserve the same equal human rights! Crazy. So radical.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems important to know why Shuster Eliassi\u2019s parents left their respective countries to live in Israel, but especially her mother. With Iran as the main funder of Hamas\u2019s \u2013 and other terrorists\u2019 \u2013 murderous activities, and the fact that tens of thousands of Jews had to flee after the 1979 revolution, it seems that Shuster Eliassi\u2019s mother\u2019s experience is crucial to understanding Shuster Eliassi. But this question, if ever asked, doesn\u2019t make it into the film.<\/p>\n

Shuster Eliassi is an intelligent and accomplished person. By age 15, she had graduated, so to speak, from being one of the kids giving flowers to visiting celebrities (who would often mistake her, because of her dark skin, for being Palestinian \u2013 and with such good Hebrew!) to speaking around the world about coexistence and the possibilities for peace. At 21, she got a full scholarship at Brandeis University for being a peace activist. She even met the Dalai Lama, who, she quips, didn\u2019t think she was Palestinian \u2013\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cHe just thought I was Indian.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 25, Shuster Eliassi landed a \u201cpeace worker\u2019s dream job\u201d \u2013 a position at the United Nations. We don\u2019t learn much about what her job entailed, but there are clips of her speaking about the West Bank and Gaza as being the biggest prisons in the world, and how \u201cthe occupation\u201d affects Palestinians and Israelis. Career-wise, she was on a wave of success, she says in her show, when she saw Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s TV program, made before he was elected, about a comedian who becomes president. Zelenskyy, of course, then did become president, so Shuster Eliassi observes that, if she wanted to take her political career seriously, she needed to start writing jokes.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi in performance. (photo from DOXA)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This takes us to where the film begins, with her at Harvard in 2019, where she\u2019s been asked to deliver a peace-building project. She tells them that Coexistence, My Ass!<\/i> will be that project, and she\u2019s accepted.<\/p>\n

In the documentary, we see the development of Coexistence, My Ass!<\/i> and how Shuster Eliassi\u2019s views change as the political situation in Israel deteriorates and the violence increases. Her parents are often her sounding board, as are friends and fellow comedians. We witness the results of a hate crime \u2013 the school in Oasis of Peace was set on fire in September 2020. We see moments of happiness, most unexpectedly, perhaps, when Shuster Eliassi returns to Israel from the United States with COVID and must be quarantined in a hotel, where sick Jews and Palestinians are being isolated from the general population.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd everyone is radically getting along. This is a 5-star oasis of peace. If they continue getting along, my comedy career is over. Just kidding, you\u2019ve read the news, I have material for years. Netanyahu has my back,\u201d says Shuster Eliassi in her act. \u201cSomebody give him a beeper,\u201d she adds sheepishly, referring to Israel\u2019s taking out of Hezbollah with exploding pagers in September 2024.<\/p>\n

Months before Oct. 7, 2023, Shuster Eliassi was disillusioned and would get into yelling matches with Jewish Israelis protesting the Netanyahu government and dangers to democracy because their protests didn\u2019t also explicitly call for equal rights for Palestinians. Whereas pre-COVID, she says, \u201cMy biggest responsibility is to speak to my people\u2026. The Jewish audience is where we have to work,\u201d the purpose of Shuster Eliassi\u2019s comedy ceases at some point to be a way to encourage peace and becomes a form of resistance.<\/p>\n

After Oct. 7, when some of Shuster Eliassi\u2019s family and friends abandon their belief in coexistence because they feel peace with Palestinians isn\u2019t possible, Shuster Eliassi goes the other way, giving up on coexistence because she feels \u2013 though doesn\u2019t state explicitly \u2013 that peace with Jewish Israelis is not possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moria, a comedy writer, advises Shuster Eliassi that people need to hear what Shuster Eliassi has to say, but it can\u2019t just be \u201cgenocide, genocide!\u201d The role of a comedian, says Moria, is \u201cto bring people together. To unify. We can\u2019t stop the killing, but we can unify people. To get people to see the world through your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, that\u2019s not what I\u2019m doing,\u201d responds Shuster Eliassi, who explains that her goal isn\u2019t to unify, it\u2019s \u201cto voice resistance to this insane show of force that has swept everyone up blindly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shuster Eliassi\u2019s friend Ranin reluctantly retains hope for coexistence because, otherwise, she tells Shuster Eliassi, there is no place for Palestinians and Arabs within Israel. For Shuster Eliassi, though, by the end of the film, there seems to be no place for Jews in Israel. She only sees fault with Israel, and somehow thinks that Hamas wouldn\u2019t want to kill all Jews if Israel had dealt with \u201cthe occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

If memory serves, Hamas is only mentioned once in the documentary, in a clip from Shuster Eliassi\u2019s show, where it is part of a joke, perhaps one told before 2023, it\u2019s not clear. Why Hamas plays little or no role in Shuster Eliassi\u2019s view of the evolving situation is the second of those two key questions that would have made Coexistence, My Ass<\/i>! a better film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Shuster Eliassi laments that Israelis \u2013 even the coexistence crowd \u2013 are not able to meet Palestinians where they\u2019re at, she is unable to meet her fellow Jewish Israelis where they are at. While she is comfortable performing at a Palestinian festival where she\u2019s greeted by a man wearing a \u201cPalestine vs the world\u201d T-shirt that, on the back, has a Palestinian flag over all Israel, she isn\u2019t comfortable with Israelis who would fill out that same map with no Palestinian territories. While she is correct that peace is only possible between equals, she only sees one oppressor \u2013 Israel. Not Hamas. Not any other international party, like Iran. Just Israel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the people at the sold-out screening of Coexistence, My Ass! <\/i>will think it\u2019s the most amazing film ever because, despite attempting to be fair \u2013 and it seems like Fares honestly did try to present multiple sides \u2013 it ultimately heralds their anti-Zionist beliefs and justifies them. Others will be disappointed that Coexistence, My Ass!<\/i> ends up being just another anti-Israel film, which will, no doubt, win more awards than it has already, despite its critical flaws.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coexistence, My Ass! follows Israeli activist and comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi as she develops her show of the same name. (photo from DOXA) Coexistence, My Ass!, directed and produced by Amber Fares, is almost a great documentary. But it fails to ask at least two key questions that would have made for a more in-depth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[4943,5278,687,5914,4330,1673,24007,24009,24006,22725,3597,4838,24008,5412],"class_list":["post-46553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-coexistence","tag-comedy","tag-gaza","tag-identity","tag-israel","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-neve-shalom","tag-noam-shuster-eliassi","tag-oasis-of-peace","tag-oct-7","tag-politics","tag-storytelling","tag-wahat-al-salam","tag-war"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}