LETTER FROM JERUSALEM
When we sit down for lunch with Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi on Wednesday February 16 in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has just returned from a trip to the small kingdom of Bahrain, on the western bank of the Persian Gulf. In the left-wing daily Ha’aretz, an editorial writer rejoices, noting how normal, almost banal, this visit now seems. Since 2020, the result of the so-called “Abraham” agreements, Israel has been rapidly normalizing its relations with several Arab States (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan), without the slightest concession to the Palestinian cause. Noam Shuster, for his part, laughs.
This stand-up artist, who is just celebrating her 35th birthday, caused a sensation in January across the Middle East, singing on the Israeli television channel Makan a short verse in Arabic to the glory of Dubai, the Emirati megalopolis. , now accessible to Israeli tourists in three hours by plane. Simpering at will, she addressed “a message of love and peace to all Arabs, especially if they live 4,000 kilometers from here”, and thanked the Emiratis for having “forgot Palestine” and the blockade of Gaza.
There it is with subtitles “Dubai Dubai” from the satire show “el shusmo” on Makan channel | written by Razi Najja… https://t.co/9RQS8oYaST
It is rare for an Israeli comedian, even on the left, to carve out an audience in the Arab world in this way. Yet Noam Shuster is not at his first attempt. In 2019, she had already attracted attention, by offering herself for nuptials to the young crown prince of the Saudi kingdom, Mohammed Ben Salman, on the Arabic antenna of i24, television channel of the Franco-Israeli telecom magnate Patrick drahi.
At the restaurant of the American Colony, a luxury hotel located in a former mansion of the Arab half of Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, Noam Shuster greets international humanitarian workers: former colleagues and friends. Five years ago, she was one of them. Employed by a United Nations agency, she tried to approach Israeli settlers, ultra-Orthodox Jews… A public far removed from the “peace industry”, of which she ended up getting tired. “I was unable to measure the impact of my work. I didn’t know what I was doing… Since then, I’ve given up on rational analyses. I try to confuse people and it works much better. »
The young woman did not become a comedian “for laughs”, but out of activism. Her mere presence on stage or on television, she believes, is a message. “An Israeli who speaks Arabic, you usually see that in Fauda », this series which recounts the feats of arms of melancholy Israeli intelligence agents, infiltrated into Palestinian territory. Beyond the television “mossaderies” of which Israel has made a specialty, Noam Shuster intends to highlight his Mizrahi identity, “Eastern Jew” or Arab Jew, anchored in the Middle East. “We should be allies of the Palestinians,” she believes. Far from the racist clichés that drag the Sephardic community in Israel – in particular its French component, within which the speech of Eric Zemmour finds a powerful echo.
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