Eight Fulbright Scholarships Available

There are eight Fulbright Scholarships that won't be getting used this year so maybe this is good news for some of you that might have applied. The reason they are available is because eight residents of Gaza who had received the scholarships won't be using them.

Hadeel Abu Kawik was supposed to spend next year in the United States on the prestigious Fulbright scholarship program, but now it appears she will remain trapped in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli blockade.

Word that the U.S. State Department was canceling her scholarship came after Abu Kawik, 23 and a computer engineering student, went through a lengthy process for the scholarship that included interviews, exams and an English test.

"I was building my hope on this scholarship," she said Friday.

Seven other Gaza students also lost their grants. The decision was made because they would not be able to get exit visas from Israel, according to State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

Wahhhhh!

What was surprising is that although this is an AP article, apparently the editors were asleep since bits like this were allowed to slip through.

The teeming coastal territory and its 1.5 million inhabitants have been controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas for nearly a year. Israel has kept its border crossings closed to everything but humanitarian aid in an attempt to weaken the group and end frequent rocket barrages aimed at Israeli towns.

Somebody, not necessarily a Fulbright scholar, may want to do the math and add up all of the money that is given to the Palestinians by everybody else in the world and the UN and see how much per person that works out to? They get more money per year then most states here in America get to run their states and the populations are a helluva of lot bigger. But hey, it ain't your money, right?

Well, actually it would be your money if the government didn't take it.

To the residents of Gaza, you made your bed, now sleep in it!