Good evening. Thank you very much. Welcome to the Fourth Annual ATFP Gala!

It is a pleasure to have you all here. My name is Hussein Ibish. I'm a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and I will be the emcee for tonight's event. It's a great pleasure to have you all here and thank you for coming out.

The ATFP gala has become, I think now, an established Washington tradition, and I want to thank you all for being part of it, many of you again and many of you for the first time. When we first started, our first ATFP annual event had 100 people, then we had 500, then 600, last year we had 650. Tonight we will have over 700 people joining us this evening, and I think it's a great testament. And this is not, of course, a random group of 700 people, but the most distinguished audience that we could imagine. So we are very grateful, and welcome.

The second thing I'd like to point out is that in spite of the recession our sponsorships this year are in excess of what we have ever raised in the past. So we are very grateful to all of the sponsors. Thank you very much indeed. We appreciate it, and we rely on your support.

As I said, I will be your emcee tonight, and we will go through the first part of the program rather quickly. We're on a very tight schedule for a number of reasons, so we will try to move along as quickly as possible. That's going to be my job, so I have to be a rather strict about this.

But the first order of business is remarks by the President and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, Ziad Asali. I've been working with Ziad in one capacity or another for almost 10 years, and I can tell you that is his vision, his drive and his energy that have put this organization well and truly on the map. I'd like to ask you for your silence and your attention for a few words of welcome from ATFP President Dr. Ziad Asali.