Episode 035 - Judaism compels us to Free Palestine with Noam Shuster

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Israeli comedian and activist, Noam Shuster Eliassi. We talk about Noam's family history, her mother is an Iranian Jew and her father was born in Jerusalem to Romanian parents who survived the Holocaust. We chat about Noam's desire to preserve the traditions and return even just to visit the birthplace of her mother and honor her Iranian lineage which spans back thousands of years. She expresses her empathy and understanding of Palestinians desire to return to Palestine. We discuss why both Noam and her father refused to serve in the IDF, and the trials and tribulations they faced as a family for being refuseniks. Michael discusses the story of Givat Amal a once Palestinian village ethnically cleansed by the European zionists who resettled the Mizrahi's in areas without adequate infrastructure. Only to also kick them out violently in order to build high rise condominiums. Noam talks about how her Mizrahi identity and her upbringing around Palestinians allowed her to better sympathize with the plight of Palestinians. We conclude by cementing that we all play our own roles, Noam from on the ground, Lara as a Palestinian in exile, and Michael as an American Jew. It is not radical to demand equality among people, and freeing Palestine will free Israeli Jews from being occupiers.

To consult the sources used in the preparation of this episode, please see:

Books/Videos:

1. Noam Shuster Eliassi (Twitter)

2. Reckoning with Laughter: Noam Shuster returns to Israel | Witness (Al Jazeera)

3. Episode 008: Do Not Comply! with Miko Peled (Palestine Pod)

4. Episode 021: Reclaiming Arab Judaism with Hadar Cohen (Palestine Pod)

5. Episode 012: When We Were Arabs with Massoud Hayoun (Palestine Pod)

6. Video shows IDF soldiers waking Palestinian kids to photograph them in dead of night (Times of Israel)

Articles:

1. South African immigrant, 25, is victim in Jerusalem shooting attack (Haaretz)

2. South Africans in Israel: A home away from home for white colonialists (Middle East Eye)

3. Refuseniks: Three Israeli soldiers tell why they will not serve in the occupied territories (UC Berkeley News)

4. Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace)

5. It wasn't the DDT; It was the humiliation (Haaretz)

6. Farewell to Givat Amal: Police evict last residents of Mizrahi neighborhood (+972 Mag)

7. The Disappeared Children of Israel (New York Times)

8. The Black Panthers and the PLO (chapter in "Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary")

9. Palestinian refugee gets Spanish citizenship after discovering Jewish roots (Times of Israel)