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Can an idyllic dream of Israel ever be reality? She says: ‘Coexistence, My Ass’
“I promise, I’m only staying for seven minutes, not 70 years,” Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi said at the 2019 Palestine Comedy Festival in East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian crowd exploded in laughter. Shuster Eliassi doubled down.
“By the way, this is Amer’s joke, I stole it.” She gestured to Amer Zahr, the festival’s founder. “It’s mine now, God promised it to me!”
For a Jewish Israeli (and the first Jewish performer to play the Palestine Comedy Festival) to tell this joke to an audience of Palestinians requires an extraordinary level of chutzpah. Fortunately, for all of us, Shuster Eliassi — subject of the new documentary Coexistence, My Ass, in which this scene appears — has that in spades.
Coexistence, My Ass, which follows Shuster Eliassi, a 38-year-old Israeli Jewish comedian and activist, over five tumultuous years — including the Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing war — opens in select theaters next week. The film, directed by Amber Fares, is ostensibly about the shaping of Shuster Eliassi’s one-woman stand-up show as she works to incorporate more of her politics into her comedy, which she performs in Hebrew, Arabic and English. She began performing standup after pivoting away from a United Nations job, newly skeptical of the peace movement in which she was raised.
Because Shuster Eliassi is a product of Wahat al Salaam/Neve Shalom — a name that means “Oasis of Peace,” and belongs to the only intentionally integrated Israeli-Palestinian community in the Middle East. World leaders and celebrities like Hillary Clinton and Jane Fonda have visited her village to witness the admittedly beautiful example of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians it provides.
But as grateful as Shuster Eliassi is for her home, she’s furious at what she sees as the lack of political co-resistance from liberal Israeli Jews. “I’m mad and not in the mood for dialogue, and I don’t think there are two equal sides,” Ranin, Shuster Eliassi’s Palestinian best friend and fellow resident of Wahat al Salaam, vents at one point. “There’s one strong side that’s fucking over the other side.”
Coexistence, My Ass makes unbearably clear that merely coexisting is not enough. Yet I fear that instead of provoking a deeper self-reflection, the documentary will become a talking point for liberal Zionist Jews seeking to prove that Israel is worth loving and that true coexistence is possible. That takeaway is not inaccurate, but it is incomplete.
As Shuster Eliassi, the daughter of an Iranian Jewish mother and Ashkenazi father, describes it, Wahat al Salaam/Neve Shalom was an idyllic, if immensely unusual, place to grow up. Her parents are devout left-wingers; some of her earliest memories are of being home alone with her mother while her father was in prison for refusing to serve in the military in the occupied West Bank. Early in the film, she recalls him explaining to her as a child that they would not be barbequing on Israeli Independence Day out of respect for their Palestinian neighbors.
Shuster Eliassi’s bilingual education and her deep relationships with Palestinians in her hometown are an enviable sight for many who desire peace in the Holy Land. Wahat al Salaam/Neve Shalom is not perfect, but the documentary shows that there is a very real sense of idyllic optimism in its way of life. Shuster Eliassi’s humor is infectious, and it charms and connects her to people who are very different.
Yet the town — which as of 2023 had a population of 313 — and the children it produces are an extreme minority in Israel.
Despite the fact that 20% of Israel’s citizens are Palestinian — including one quarter of Israel’s doctors, and a whopping 49% of the pharmacists — most Israelis are not raised in a society that teaches them to be mindful that Israeli Independence Day is also Nakba Day. The documentary suggests that even among self-described liberal Israelis—the kinds of citizens who poured into the streets to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform bill, and later, for the return of the hostages — that the concerns of the Palestinians are an afterthought. People like Shuster Eliassi, who continue to consider the occupation as the root cause of Israel’s suffering, are deluded radicals.
Over and over in the film, she is told by fellow Israelis that she is a traitor to her people. Even those who do not outright denounce her tend to feel that her focus on Palestinian rights and self-determination is misguided.
“I agree with you about the occupation,” one woman tells her at a Tel Aviv protest against the judicial reform, “and still, first and foremost, we need to protect our home.” At another judicial reform protest, an older man is enraged by Shuster Eliassi’s speech telling demonstrators that “there’s no such thing as democracy with occupation.” “You’re an enemy of the state!” he screams.
One of the most telling moments of the film is when Shuster Eliassi’s friend Elad, a fellow comedian, tells a story about his childhood growing up in Pisgat Ze’ev, a settlement within East Jerusalem. He describes how on Yom Kippur, still clad in white from services, he and his friends would go stand on the highway overpass and drop stones onto Palestinian cars.
“That was our ‘hang,’” he says dryly.
Shuster Eliassi asks why he thinks they did that. “Because someone instructs them to,” he says. “A fifth grader doesn’t just wake up one morning and decide to go throw stones.”
The point of documentary filmmaking is to get a slice of reality on the record. Shuster Eliassi’s slice is captivating, and I sincerely hope that her story inspires people and gives them a deeper understanding of both the Israeli psyche, and what co-resisting with Palestinians looks like.
Because the whole point of Shuster Eliassi’s comedy and activism is that coexistence is a goal that can’t be achieved without action. Instead of wondering why there is only one Neve Shalom/Wahat as Salaam in all of Israel — “The State of Israel doesn’t support our project,” community spokeswoman Samah Salaime says at one point — I worry that most American Jewish viewers will walk from the film complacent that it exists at all.
After two utterly miserable years, the Jewish community is desperate for stories of hope, which Coexistence, My Ass provides. Yet especially in the aftermath of a fragile ceasefire, when Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are confronting utter devastation and violence, the story of a dynamic comedian speaking truth to power is an opportunity to examine our own capacity for solidarity.
The emphasis on co-resistance, not simply coexistence, is laid bare late in the documentary, as Shuster Eliassi and her parents watch the news of violent riots in May 2021 in mixed Jewish and Arab cities. In Bat Yam, an Arab driver is pulled from his car and nearly beaten to death in front of a television camera crew.
“Aba,” Shuster Eliassi says to her father, “in this moment of truth, the Jews are nowhere to be found. They’re not in the struggle.”
Even the village WhatsApp feed, she remarks, during a moment of existential struggle for its Palestinian residents, is full of “love and light” activism from the Jews, versus an expression of true solidarity.
“They want to get back to the coexistence template,” she says, “and that’s not what’s needed now.”
The post Can an idyllic dream of Israel ever be reality? She says: ‘Coexistence, My Ass’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Candace Owens and the QAnonization of Anti-Israel Rhetoric
Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Candace Owens’ recent viral post conflating Israel, ISIS, the Star of David, paganism, and the abuse of children is not merely wrong or provocative. It is something more revealing — and more dangerous.
Owens claims that “despite Israel’s best efforts to destroy the ancient world in the Middle East — relics still remain and reveal the truth.” She asserts that “the Kiddush cup is the symbol of Judaism,” that the Star of David has “ALWAYS been associated with Canaanite cults and Baal worship,” and that Aleister Crowley and his “occult friends who abuse children utilize this symbol in their ceremonial magic.” She pairs these claims with an image she falsely identifies as a “2nd-century temple in Baalbek, Lebanon,” adds that ISIS “has a knack for destroying ancient Canaanite temples,” and ends with the insinuation: “Who do you think controls ISIS?”
This is not argument. It is an indictment assembled from fragments — misidentified images, decontextualized symbols, and recycled antisemitic tropes — designed to contaminate. The method is deliberate: connect enough charged elements and let the audience complete the accusation without ever having to state it openly.
Owens urges her audience to “wake up” to what she presents as a hidden truth: that Jewish symbols are not Jewish at all; that Judaism is secretly pagan or occult; that Jewish ritual objects are implicated in sinister practices; that Jews or Israel are responsible for the destruction of ancient history; and that shadowy forces tied to Jewish symbolism abuse children. The implications are unmistakable.
What is most striking is the absence of evidence. No archaeology. No primary sources. No theology. No peer-reviewed history. Just insinuation stacked on insinuation, sealed with the conspiratorial refrain to “wake up.”
This is not political criticism. It is ideological collapse.
In modern terms, this is the QAnonization of antisemitism.
There is a reason that Owens’ post contains no factual evidence: it doesn’t exist.
In its place appears the oldest components of conspiratorial antisemitism: secret knowledge reserved for the initiated; symbols stripped of historical context and recast as sinister codes; insinuations of ritual corruption; and the projection of vast, hidden power onto Jews.
This is not “thinking outside the box.” It is backwards thinking. Owens’ move is not modern. It is medieval.
The most revealing element of Owens’ post is not its historical illiteracy, but its moral destination: the insinuation of child abuse.
This is not incidental. It is the endpoint of the narrative. From medieval blood libels to modern conspiracy movements, antisemitism reliably converges on the same accusation. Jews are charged with violating what society holds most sacred because the charge is designed not to persuade, but to obliterate moral resistance.
Once Jews are framed as abusers of children, no counterargument matters. No evidence is sufficient. Debate becomes impossible.
Owens did not stumble into this trope. She arrived precisely where antisemitic narratives always arrive when they run unchecked.
Ancient Israel outlawed child sacrifice when it was widespread across the Near East. It denied divinity to kings, subordinated rulers to law, and insisted that power itself was morally accountable. Human beings were no longer fuel for the gods; every individual life was sacred. To accuse Jews of Baal worship is not confusion. It is inversion — the projection of pagan cruelty onto the civilization that dismantled it.
Furthermore, Owens’ claims about Jewish symbols collapse under even minimal scrutiny.
The Star of David is not an occult emblem. It appears as a Jewish symbol in late antiquity, with archaeological evidence from the synagogue at Capernaum dating to the second century CE, and it recurs throughout late antique and medieval Jewish life. Its adoption reflects Jewish continuity, not pagan borrowing.
The Kiddush cup is a sanctification vessel used to bless wine — on Shabbat and holidays — but it was never the “symbol of Judaism” as Owens’ claims. Its purpose is to mark sacred time, family gatherings, and restraint. There is no historical, textual, or anthropological evidence tying it to anything resembling Owens’ claims or insinuations.
The image Owens presents as a “2nd-century Canaanite temple” at Baalbek is fictitious. Baalbek’s monumental remains — the Temples of Jupiter, Bacchus, and Venus — are Roman imperial constructions from the first to third centuries CE. Baalbek was a Roman city, not a Canaanite cult center.
Owens’ follow-on post fares no better. She points to the historical appearance of a six-pointed star — often called the “Seal of Solomon” — in Moroccan iconography and on some flags and coins in the 19th and early 20th centuries as supposed proof that the symbol is not Jewish.
This is a classic example of conspiracy reasoning masquerading as historical insight.
Yes, the hexagram appeared in Moroccan art and occasionally on flags prior to 1915, when Sultan Yusef formally replaced it with a five-pointed star to distinguish the national flag and emphasize Islamic symbolism. But the hexagram’s presence there proves precisely nothing about Judaism. Geometric symbols migrate across cultures. Their use in Islamic or Christian contexts does not erase their meaning within Jewish civilization — just as the crescent’s appearance outside Islam does not make it non-Islamic.
Owens takes a very limited historical fact, strips it of context, and weaponizes it to imply occult continuity and Jewish corruption.That is not history. It is symbol scavenging in service of a predetermined conclusion.
Archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and historical memory all point in the same direction: Jewish civilization emerged in the land of Israel, maintained continuity there for millennia, preserved its language, law, and rituals through exile, and launched a moral revolution that shaped the ethical foundations of the Western and Islamic worlds alike.
When that evidence proves stubborn, opponents do not refine their claims. They abandon the field. Israel is no longer wrong — it is demonic. Jews are no longer mistaken — they are occult.
Antisemitism does not begin with expulsions, pogroms or gas chambers. It begins when lies are repackaged as insight, when conspiracy theories replace scholarship, and when hatred is disguised as revelation.
Candace Owens’ post is not mere controversy. Its popularity — over 1.4 million views as of this writing — is the symptom and proof of how far this intellectual rot has already spread.
And history is unforgiving to societies that mistake intellectual decay for courage — until the consequences arrive in forms no one can plausibly claim to have misunderstood.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Middle East Needs Long-Term Solution, UAE Says Ahead of US-Iran Crisis Talks
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with students in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 3, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Regional power United Arab Emirates urged Iran and the United States on Tuesday to use the resumption of nuclear talks this week to resolve a standoff that has led to mutual threats of air strikes, emphasizing that the Middle East does not need another war.
Iran and the United States will discuss Iran‘s nuclear program on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and US officials told Reuters on Monday. US President Donald Trump said that with big US warships heading to Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.
A source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would take part in the talks, along with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kushner’s plans. Ministers from other countries in the region are also expected to attend.
An Iranian diplomatic source said Tehran’s view of the talks is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, adding that the Islamic Republic’s defensive capabilities are non-negotiable and that it is ready for any scenario.
“It remains to be seen whether the United States also intends to conduct serious, result-oriented negotiations or not,” the source said.
Iranian sources have said Trump is also seeking to limit Iran‘s ballistic missile program, which Iranian officials say is an essential component of the country’s defense.
Earlier the UAE, a highly influential Gulf Arab oil producer and close US ally, said the region cannot afford another conflict.
“I think that the region has gone through various calamitous confrontations,” the UAE president’s adviser Anwar Gargash told a panel at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
“I don’t think we need another one, but I would like to see direct Iranian-American negotiations leading to understandings so that we don’t have these issues every other day.”
Iran should rebuild its relationship with Washington to reach a wider geo-strategic deal which could help Tehran repair its economy ravaged by US sanctions, Gargash said.
IRAN FEARS US STRIKE MIGHT IMPERIL RULE, SOURCES SAY
Gulf Arab states are worried that Iran will carry out its threat to target US bases on their territory should Trump attack the Islamic Republic again.
In June, the United States struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in at the close of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Since then, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work – which it says is for peaceful, not military purposes – has stopped.
Recent satellite imagery of two of the targeted sites, Isfahan and Natanz, appears to show new roofing over two destroyed buildings but no other signs of rebuilding, according to the imagery provided by Planet Labs and reviewed by Reuters.
The meeting in Istanbul aims to revive diplomacy over the long-running dispute about Iran‘s nuclear program and dispel fears of a new regional war.
The US naval buildup near Iran follows a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month.
Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene, has since demanded nuclear concessions from Iran and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking,” while Tehran’s top security official Ali Larijani said arrangements for negotiations were under way.
The priority of the Istanbul talks is to avoid conflict and de-escalate tension, a regional official told Reuters. Regional powers including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates were also invited, he said.
Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried a US strike could break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back onto the streets, according to six current and former officials.
Officials told Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that public anger over last month’s crackdown – the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution– has reached a point where fear is no longer a deterrent, four current officials briefed on the discussions said.
Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for resumption of talks: Zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and ending its support for regional proxies.
Iran has long said all three demands are unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile program, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.
One Iranian official said: “Diplomacy is ongoing. For talks to resume, Iran says there should not be preconditions and that it is ready to show flexibility on uranium enrichment, including handing over 400 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU), accepting zero enrichment under a consortium arrangement as a solution.”
Tehran’s regional sway has been weakened by Israel’s attacks on its proxies – from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq – as well as by the ousting of Iran‘s close ally, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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Somaliland Expects Israel Trade Deal, Has Minerals to Offer, Leader Says
Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi speaks during the unveiling of the Somaliland Mission premises in Nairobi, Kenya, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi
Somaliland expects to reach a trade agreement soon with Israel, the first country to recognize its independence, and is willing to offer rights to valuable mineral deposits as part of a deal, its leader said in an interview with Reuters.
Israel in late December became the first country to recognize the Republic of Somaliland, which borders northern Somalia and has claimed independence for decades. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would seek immediate cooperation in agriculture, health, technology, and the economy.
Speaking to Reuters via video link from Dubai where he was attending the World Government Summit, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi said no bilateral economic deal with Israel had yet been reached, but Somaliland expected to sign “a partnership agreement.”
“At the moment, there is no trade, and there is no investment from Israel. But we are hoping 100% [for] their investment, their trade, and hopefully we will engage with the business people and the government of Israel soon,” he said.
“Somaliland is a very rich country in resources – minerals, oil, gas, marine, in agriculture, energy, and other sectors … We have meat, we have fish, we have minerals and they [Israel] need them. So, trade can start from these main sectors,” he said. “The sky is the limit.”
He said in return Somaliland would seek access to Israeli technology.
Somaliland says its mineral resources include vast reserves of lithium, critical for batteries and electric vehicles. In 2024 the Saudi Mining Company Kilomass secured an exploration deal there for lithium and other critical minerals.
Abdullahi said he was grateful to Israel for being first to recognize Somaliland. While Somaliland also hopes for future military cooperation with Israel, he said establishing Israeli military bases had not been discussed.
He said he had accepted an invitation from Netanyahu and would visit Israel soon, but no date had yet been set. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited Somaliland a month ago.
Abdullahi said he expects all United Nations countries eventually to follow Israel‘s lead, including the United Arab Emirates and the United States, though he said it was normal for recognition to take time.
He said he had a good working relationship with the US and believes President Donald Trump will “someday” recognize Somaliland. Last month, he pitched investment deals at a dinner in Davos attended by Trump’s son Eric.
Israel‘s decision to recognize Somaliland has drawn an angry response from Somalia, and has also been criticized by China, Turkey, Egypt, and the African Union.
Somaliland also cooperates with the UAE, with DP World a big investor in the Berbera port. The UAE has “not decided officially yet but they are just one of the countries we expect to recognize Somaliland,” Abdullahi said.
“We also expect that the Saudi government will make the same investment in Somaliland,” he said.