In the long history of Israeli participation in the Olympics, we have seen limited success. Our athletes have won a grand total of 6 medals (4 of them Bronze, 1 Silver and 1 Gold).

Clearly Israeli athletes are not a big threat to turning the sports world on its ear. It is a "White man can't jump" kind of thing. Us Jews just are not made out to be top athletes. Of course there are individual exceptions, but we can never get them all together in the same year or generation, to put together a formidable group to vie for international success.

Our team is so serious, they could not even bother getting their own domain name for their website. Not only that, but their website, the website of the Israel Olympic Committee, does not even work. That is how serious we are about our sports and sports promotion.

Israel does have a representative on the International Olympic Committee, a.k.a the I.O.C. His name is Alex Giladi. Giladi is an Iranian born Israeli. According to his brief Hebrew Wiki page, he was a broadcaster whose career includes having worked the 1972 Munich Games, EuroLeague Basketball Finals, the Eurovision that was in Israel, and many other historic events involving Israel. In 1994 Giladi was elected to the IOC.

Giladi gave an interview to the newspaper "Yisrael HaYom". After all the talk about sports and athletes, Giladi talks about his dream. That would be his dream of Israel hosting the Olympics.

Pinch yourself.

That is right. Giladi dreams of the day Israel will host the Olympics. He understands it is not going to happen anytime soon, and definitely not until after we have signed peace deals with all of our neighbors. Yet Giladi is optimistic that this can be accomplished in time to allow us to host the Olympic Games of 2048 - in honor of Israel's 100th birthday.

He is optimistic that we could pull it off, despite our not even being able to build a bridge properly for the Maccabiah Games. In 1997 a bridge collapsed during the games, plunging a bunch of athletes into the highly polluted Yarkon River, killing four and injuring 60 more.
Giladi says, "If we can get people to realize that there is a deadline, and deadlines cannot be pushed off, we can definitely organize an excellent Olympic Games. There are aspects of life that we excel in, areas in which we are the best in the world."

I am just not sure of the bigger dream is that we can actually host the Olympics, or that we can attain peace with all our neighbors by 2048...