The Past is Not Another Country

John Lyons is a three-time Walkley Award winner who has reported at home and abroad across four decades. From the Middle East he won the Walkley Award for investigative journalism for a report for Four Corners. He is currently the ABC News Global Affairs Editor. His previous roles include Associate Editor (Digital Content) at The Australian and Executive Producer of the Nine Network’s Sunday program.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is the author of several books and writes for, among others, the Guardian and the London Review of Books.

Nathan Thrall is the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, which was named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time, The New Statesman, and the Financial Times. He spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has taught at Bard College. Originally from California, he lives in Jerusalem.

Bruce Wolpe is a Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre and a regular contributor on US politics across media platforms in Australia. He has worked with the Democrats in Congress during President Barack Obama's first term, on the staff of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and as Gillard’s chief of staff. From 1998-2009, Wolpe was a senior executive at Fairfax Media in Sydney. He is the author of several books including Trump's Australia. 

Debbie Whitmont is a journalist and author, former ABC TV Middle East correspondent and winner of two Walkley Awards and three Human Rights TV Awards as a reporter for ABC TV's Four Corners.