Remember the names!

In the following excerpt from the NY Times it states that very few Israelis recognize the names of the athletes going Beijing:

August 3, 2008,

The Olympics Overseas: In Israel, the Team Nobody Knows
By The New York Times
We have asked correspondents and reporters from the Times’s overseas bureaus to tell us how the Olympics are being perceived in various countries around the world. Below, a dispatch from Isabel Kershner in the Jerusalem bureau.
JERUSALEM — Israel was scheduled to send 43 athletes to compete in the 2008 Olympics. But in the days before the start of the Games, most Israelis could not name a single one of them.
A poll published in late July indicated that 76 percent of Israelis could not come up with the name of any Israeli competitor; 96 percent could not name any one of the new immigrants who make up a third of the athletes and almost half of the trainers going to Beijing.
Israeli Olympic pole vaulter Alex Averbukh. (AFP/Don Emmert)
The poll was commissioned by the country’s Absorption Ministry, which has mounted a campaign under the slogan “Together, we achieve more,” to coincide with the Olympics. The idea is to promote the contribution made to Israel by the new immigrant athletes, most of whom hail from the former Soviet Union, and to ease immigrant integration in general.
Clearly, there’s a ways to go.
One of the stars of the campaign, Aleksandr Averbukh, 33, is billed on Ynet, the Web site of the most popular Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, as “Israel’s best athlete ever.” A pole vault champion who was born in Russia and became an Israeli citizen in 1999, Mr. Averbukh reached the pole vault finals at the Olympics in Sydney and Athens in 2000 and 2004 and won the European championship in 2002 and 2006.

It would be great to have the world see Israel in a positive light - perhaps participation on the world athletic stage will do that - we can then remember Israeli athletes for their accomplishments rather than mourn their loss as we did after Munich.

Israel's 2008 Olympic Team: Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or
Aug. 3, 2008Allon Sinai , THE JERUSALEM POST
To say Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or booked his place at the Beijing Games at the last moment is an understatement. Shapira was added to the Israeli delegation on Thursday, just eight days before the start of the Olympics.
The 19-year-old had initially fallen four hundredths of a second short of the criteria time in the 200 meter freestyle and it seemed he would have to wait four years to make his Olympic debut in London.
The High Court of the Olympic Committee of Israel decided, however, that Bar-Or's national record of 1:48.76 minutes, which he set in Croatia two weeks ago, is good enough as he never had the chance to request to be selected as one of the three youngsters in the delegation because the now suspended Max Jaben had initially been Israel's representative to the Games in the 200m free.
Bar-Or has long been regarded as the future of Israeli swimming and the Beijing Games should be the first of many Olympics for him. A place in the Olympic semis is, nevertheless, within his reach next week, assuming of course he sets a new national record.