By Debbie Schlussel

When I was a little kid, I used to love wearing Izod Lacoste polo shirts, bearing the little alligator embroidered patch insignia.  Now, I know I had good taste and picked a company with principles.  Lacoste asked the Lacoste Elysee Prize–a photography contest it sponsors–to dump an anti-Israel Palestinian photographer, Larissa Sansour, and her anti-Israel “artwork” from the competition.  Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about the “principles” (or, rather, lack thereof) of Switzerland’s Musée de l’Elysée, which hosted the contest.  Because Lacoste got rid of the anti-Israel sharmutah, the Swiss museum canceled the competition, so a real artist/photographer won’t win.

The thing is, you never hear such an uproar over art and photography contests throughout the Mid-East, from which Israeli artists (many of them anti-Israel and far-left themselves) are excluded because they are Israeli and they are Jewish. No one–no Swiss museum or anyone else–objects to this or shuts down a contest over it. Never. Why? Because there is a double standard, and Jews are considered subhuman and unworthy of protest. Palestinians, on the other hand, are always our precious, coddled victims, no matter what.

Larissa Sansour’s “artistry”–which is basically political hate-filled photo crap–includes a skyscraper nation of “Palestine” in which all the floors have names of “Palestinian” cities . . . except that many of those cities are Israeli cities, including Jerusalem.  Her other photos feature the Al-Aqsa mosque, illegally built on top of the holiest part of the Jewish Temple . . . the mosque which is the symbol of every single Islamic terrorist group that targets innocent Israeli civilians. Her “art” features pop culture-infused BS, showing faked Israeli soldiers pointing guns at a woman in a car, and pics of the fence the Israelis had to build so her people would stop blowing up innocent Israeli civilians.  The segment of the fence she shows is graffiti calling Israel “apartheid.”  Wow, that’s original.  Whatever will the art world do without her?  Oh, and she poses as a Palestinian astronaut being the first to land on the moon, placing the ugly Palestinian flag there.  As if . . . .  She claims this shows that a Palestinian State is a “giant leap for mankind.”  Uh-huh, if the leap is backward into an exploding pit.  Below are two dumb videos of her “art”.  Art or propagandistic BS?  It’s quite obvious it ain’t art.

(FYI, the blonde lesbionic woman in Sansour’s second “art” video, below, filmed in London, is Oreet Ashery, an anti-Israel “Jewish” Israeli bitch. Note how the video doesn’t mention that most Muslim countries forbade Jews to study Judaism or practice Jewish culture and that the thing about names of cities is a joke. The name of the city, for example, has been Jerusalem for thousands of years, and suddenly some backward moongod cult calls it “Al Quds?” 80% of Israel’s Jewish population are Jews from Arabic countries, and they ate falafel and other such food for thousands of years, not lox and bagels. It’s their food, our food, not the “Palestinians'” food.)

You have to wonder, though, if what Ms. Sansour says is true (that Lacoste knew she would be nominated and was involved in that process), why Lacoste allowed Sansour’s anti-Israel propaganda to be nominated for the competition in the first place. They already gave her more than $5,000 for making the “shortlist,” which appears to be a euphemism for “finalist.”  More:

The French clothing brand Lacoste has demanded that Jerusalem-born artist Larissa Sansour be removed from the shortlist of the Lacoste Elysée photography prize, because it regards the artist’s work “too pro-Palestinian.”

A prestigious competition, whose winner receives 25,000 euros (approximately $32,770) in cash, the Lacoste Elysée Prize is sponsored by Lacoste and awarded by Switzerland’s Musée de l’Elysée.

Sansour was among eight artists who received word in November that they’d been shortlisted for the 2011 prize. In December, Lacoste demanded that her nomination be revoked. Spokesmen stated the company refused to support Sansour’s work, which it labelled “too pro-Palestinian.” . . .

Like the other nominees, Sansour was awarded a bursary of 4,000 euros (approximately $5,240) and given carte blanche to produce a portfolio of images for the final adjudication.

In November 2011, Sansour said, three photos – sketches for her proposed “Nation Estate” project – were accepted, and the prize’s administrators congratulated the artist for her work and professionalism. Sansour’s name was included on all the literature relating to the prize and on the website as an official nominee.

Her name has since been removed from the prize’s website, and her project has been withdrawn from an impending issue of the contemporary art magazine “ArtReview,” which is set to announce the nominees.

The artist says she was asked to sign-off on a statement saying that she withdrew from her nomination “in order to pursue other opportunities.” She refused to do so. . . .

Her work oscillates from playful-looking works like “Bethlehem Bandolero” (in which she strides through her home town dressed as a cowboy, en route to a confrontation with Israel’s separation wall) and “Happy Days,” which also deploys mainstream pop culture forms, to open-up the spectator’s mind to Palestinian realities.

Sansour’s other work documents her family’s contest with the occupation regime surrounding Bethlehem. The best-known of these works is her 2006 video “Mloukhieh (Soup over Bethlehem),” which opens on the rooftop of the Sansour’s Bethlehem home, where the family’s gathered for meal of mloukhieh. As Sansour suggests, the dish is one component of a multi-faceted Palestinian identity that has been fragmented but not destroyed by Israeli occupation.

Hmmm . . . for someone so “occupied,” she appears to be clueless about who is occupying her. Bethlehem is run and ruled by the Palastinian Authority, NOT Israel. There is no “occupation” there, except by Abu Mazen a/k/a Holocaust denier and Munich Olympic Massacre terrorist paymaster Mahmoud Abbas. And it hardly sounds like being “oppressed” if you are freely allowed to create such political junk and get paid $5,000-plus to make more of it.

The new work shortlisted for the Lacoste l’Elysée Prize is entitled “Nation Estate.” . . . The photo series depicts a futuristic Palestinian state: a single skyscraper that houses all the Palestinian people.

Within this new Nation Estate, residents have recreated their lost cities on separate floors. “Jerusalem” is on the third floor, for instance, while “Ramallah” is on the fourth. Sansour’s hometown of Bethlehem is on the fifth floor. . . .

“Last week the director of the museum calls me and says that unfortunately a high ranking someone at Lacoste (nobody knows his name) demanded that I be taken off the list of nominees.

“The strange thing is that Lacoste was in on [the selection] process from the very beginning, so they were fully aware of my work when they nominated me.

“What seems to have struck them is the content of this new work [which] is inspired by the Palestinian bid [for official status at the United Nations.] That appears to have been too controversial for Lacoste.”

For its part, Lausanne’s Musée de l’Elysée has expressed its regret at Lacoste’s decision to censor Sansour’s work and has offered to exhibit “Nation Estate” in a context separate from the Lacoste-sponsored prize.

See, Europe bends over forward for Palestinian propagandists. This is just the latest one. I’m actually surprised Lacoste had the guts to finally step in and say no.

But, again, to assuage the Palestinian kalbeh [dog], they ruin the competition for everyone else.  In incredible irony, the Elysee Museum said it canceled the contest because

its decision reiterated its commitment the “fundamental value” of freedom of expression.

Hmmm . . . “freedom of expression?”  Have they ever been to Bethlehem or Ramallah?  Just ask Christian Palestinians–the few that are still left there–about that.  And tell me how much freedom of anything there is in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority and HAMAS.

Hilarious.