RPL in the News: ‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ Review: Urgent and Brilliant Documentary Finds Radical Ideas Following Israeli Stand-Up Comic’s Peacekeeping Efforts

February 06, 2025

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Variety Reporter Tomris Laffly reviews Noam Shuster Eliassi's latest film "Coexistence, My Ass." The review highlights Eliassi's cultural upbringing, her comedic talents, and her time at Harvard. Eliassi was a RPL Fellow in Conflict and Peace in 2019-2020.

Comedy wasn’t always Noam Shuster Eliassi’s purpose in life. But as true callings sometimes do, stand-up found this immensely charismatic and funny intellectual eventually. After all, the magnetic subject of Amber Fares’s urgent, eye-opening and enormously compassionate documentary “Coexistence, My Ass” has always been opinionated, sporting a great sense of humor since childhood.

But growing up as the poster child of good-will between Israel and Palestine, there were other priorities for her, like landing a United Nations job and working towards peacekeeping in the Middle East.

Utilizing one of Eliassi’s uproarious stand-up routines as its narrative spine, the often very funny, other times deeply heartrending “Coexistence, My Ass” takes its name from the comedy show that she developed at Harvard University upon an invitation. (Her inspiration for writing comedy? Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian.) The routine charts Eliassi’s truly one-of-a-kind journey as an Israeli woman raised by an Iranian-Jewish mother and a Romanian-Jewish father.

They were woke, progressive leftists,” Eliassi proudly declares in her show. “They believed Israelis and Palestinians deserve the same equal human rights,” she adds even louder with a tone of faux-disbelief.As we learn throughout the film, Eliassi owes much of her progressive worldview to her upbringing in Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, the only village in Israel where the Palestinian and Jewish people live together, and do so entirely by choice.

Her family, for instance, wouldn’t let anyone get away with any jokey remarks about Arabs. And they were respectful about their neighbors’ holidays. Eliassi particularly remembers how her parents chose not to do barbecue on the Israeli Independence Day out of respect for their Palestinian friends’ day of mourning. But the heartwarming hilarity still ensued when it was a Palestinian neighbor who ended up grilling kebabs, with the young Noam eagerly asking for a piece. “No agenda, just tahini!”

Eliassi recounts the miraculous instances when their community was visited by the likes of Jane Fonda, Hillary Clinton and even Roger Waters, with Eliassi and her Palestinian best friend, Ranin, becoming spokespeople for their town. During this time, Eliassi became fluent across different languages (she speaks excellent Arabic, a rare skill in her circles), eventually finding herself at Brandeis University to study international relations, and then at Harvard, to write her show.