Noam Shuster-Eliassi is an Israeli comedian, screenwriter, and activist. Born in 1986, she was raised in Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam (“Oasis of Peace”), an intentional cooperative community in Israel jointly inhabited by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens. Her father is the son of Romanian Holocaust survivors, and her mother is of Iranian Jewish (Mizrahi) descent. Through her upbringing, she became fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Prior to performing stand-up comedy, she worked as a conflict resolution specialist for Interpeace, a international peacebuilding organization affiliated with the United Nations.
Shuster-Eliassi began performing comedy in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, focusing her satire on Middle Eastern geopolitics, identity politics, and military occupation. In 2018, she was named “New Jewish Comedian of the Year” by London’s JW3 cultural center. While a fellow at Harvard Divinity School in 2019, she developed her solo comedy show, titled “Coexistence, My Ass!” A feature-length documentary following her work and activism, also titled “Coexistence, My Ass!,” debuted on the international film festival circuit in 2024.
Shuster-Eliassi uses satire to critique Israeli policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and challenge institutional definitions of peacebuilding, arguing that true coexistence cannot occur without political equality, civil rights, and an end to military rule; as she stated, “Coexistence doesn’t happen between the oppressor and the oppressed. It happens between two equals.” She was the first Jewish comedian to perform at the Palestine Comedy Festival. During military escalations in Gaza, she has used her bilingual Arabic and Hebrew social media channels to protest military operations, criticize domestic silence surrounding civilian casualties in Gaza, and call for equal political rights over retaliatory violence.
Shuster-Eliassi is also one of the signatories of the 2025 public statement, “Global Jewish Call on the UN and World Leaders to Sanction Israel.”