‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ Review: Urgent and Brilliant Documentary Finds Radical Ideas Following Israeli Stand-Up Comic’s Peacekeeping Efforts
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.
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“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.
The unspoken part of Eliassi’s recollection here is what makes her witticism vital. She implies, “Isn’t equal human rights supposed to be an absolute, commonly accepted reality that should go without saying?” Like in this subtle joke and many others that follow, Eliassi often attracts authentic belly laughs with her satire, both through what she says, and also when she doesn’t have to spell things out. In that, her comedy equals activism when she steps in front of an audience and performs her sets (in Arabic, Hebrew and English) with fearlessly sharp remarks. “Don’t worry, I’m only going to be here for seven minutes, not 70 years,” she says to a Palestinian audience roaring with laughter. This is the very moment when those who aren’t already familiar with Eliassi’s provocative work and pitch-perfect comic timing might just fall in love with her.
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.
Shot over five seismic years, “Coexistence, My Ass” snaps together the many highs and lows of Eliassi’s growing prominence as an artist who receives broad support as well as backlash. Some Israelis on social media call her out for supporting Palestine more than her own people. While she puts on a brave face reading some of the mean remarks online, Fares underscores their growing weight on Eliassi’s spirit. Elsewhere, the economically edited documentary — always on point, never overindulgent — recalls the time Eliassi contacted COVID during her travels in 2020, quarantining at a Jerusalem hotel and performing stand-up to her fellow patients, comprised of both Israelis and Palestinians. In those routines, and many others that precede and follow it, she fiercely mines her multicultural background and her dating troubles as a single woman, setting the stage for an inspiring unity across people from all walks of life.
The film’s final chapter is its most searing. Eliassi meets a romantic interest she is excited to introduce to her parents. But this falls on the eve of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages. The months-long military offensive by Israel that followed has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians.
Eliassi is broken about it all, witnessing even some of her progressive loved ones changing their tune about Palestinian rights. But she remains clear-eyed in her assessment during a routine, despite those who continue to call her a traitor. To her, the elephant in the room used to be the occupation, which, in her words, turned West Bank and Gaza into the biggest open prisons in the world. “And how different things would have been if we’ve addressed this elephant in the room in a timely fashion,” she ponders. These days, she adds, the genocide of Palestinians is the new elephant in the room that is going unaddressed.
Her message, that peaceful coexistence can only exist between two equals (and not between the oppressor and oppressed) is not only an inspiring one, but also one proven to be true throughout history. She wishes for the day when peace becomes a lived-in reality, rather than an empty feel-good message. While there is nothing hilarious about these topics, Eliassi and “Coexistence, My Ass” do the impossible and deliver radical ideas through humor. Rarely has comedy felt this serious and urgent.
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