Arik Ze'evi, who was Israel's greatest hope for a medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has been ousted from the games after losing to Brazilian world champion Luciano Correa in his first battle for a bronze medal.

 Earlier this morning, Israelis locally and abroad held their breath and an entire Nation hoped and prayed that Israeli judoka Ze'evi who began his first match at the Beijing Olympics, would succeed in his mission, and bring home Israel's first Olympic gold.

However Ze'evi lost the third round to Brazilian world champion Luciano Correa, in the battle for the bronze medal.

After a successful first round, Ze'evi lost in the second round  after being defeated by European champion Henk Grol of The Netherlands.  In the first round, Ze'evi came out victorious beating  France's Frederic Demontfaucon. Demontfaucon, the former world champion and Olympic medalist in the event, lost 10-0 in the match.

Scores of Israeli fans as well as journalists watched Ze'evi in action at the Beijing University. 

In Jerusalem, taxi drivers, stall owners were glued to their radio sets joining in the step by step description of Ze'evi's match. "Its about time something good happened, Israel should get a gold medal," one taxi driver said.

Another Jerusalemite busy sipping coffee got into an early morning  discussion with another coffee customer, and tried to convince the latter why more money should be invested in Israeli athletes and sports in general.

The "customer" looked at the Jerusalemite and said "our problem is that we Israelis view ourselves as one of the world's most powerful Nations, instead of trying to keep up with the big guns, we should focus on the real issues."

When the Jerusalemite queried what the "real issues" are, the coffee customer gave him a long hard look and shrugged his shoulders and declared, "if you don't know why should I tell you," and with that walked off, but turned back and shouted "I tell you one thing though Arik Ze'evi has to win for Israel's sake."08/14/08