Stuck in recovery mode and cannot reinstall Lion

I have an early 2008 Macbook, running on OS X Lion 10.8, purchased second hand from Ebay in the UK, and now I am based in Israel.

For the last few days, my macbook started to run very slowly, crashing every time i opened a web browser for example.
I decided to erase the drive. I did this by booting up in recovery mode, and through disk utility erasing the drive.

Now my problem is that I cannot reinstall Lion, because my Apple ID has never purchased Lion.

I have thought about using another computer to access the Apple store, purchase Lion, then go back to my macbook and see if my apple ID works when trying to reinstall Lion. (I have realised however, that Lion 10.8 is no longer available in the apple store, and that only mountain lion can be purchased. My macbook is early 2008, and therefore not compatible with mountain lion)

Another idea I had was to use another computer to download Lion 10.8, save it to my external hard drive, and boot from that external hard drive. However, again, 10.8 no longer available)

I tried doing these things in safari in recovery mode, however I am not able to download anything, not even to my external hard drive.

Another idea I had was using someone elses Apple ID who has purchased lion, when trying to reinstall in recovery mode.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? I'm running out of ideas. I also don't know anyone nearby who has a macbook or would have a version of Lion I could boot off a memory stick.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.