Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. He is an award-winning author. He has authored four books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel.

Parsi’s latest book – Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2017) – reveals the “behind the scenes” story to the nuclear deal with Iran.

He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East.

He has been named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy in Washington DC for five years in a row since 2021, and preeminent public intellectual Noam Chomsky calls Parsi “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran.”

Sydney University academics Professor John Keane and Dr Nick Riemer have been taken to the Australian Federal Court, as their own colleagues lodged an antisemitism complaint against them. The reason: Being outspoken against the state of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.

"Opinions expressed in this conversation are personal and do NOT reflect the opinions or policy of the University of Sydney."

John Keane is a Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. His latest book is ‘Thinking About Democracy in Turbulent Times’: Sorbonne Lectures (2025). His ‘Open Letter on Israel, Palestine, Genocide and Toleration’ helped trigger the lawfare case against him and Nick Riemer.

Dr Nick Reimer is a Linguistics academic at the University of Sydney and a long-time participant in the Palestine solidarity movement in Australia. He is the author of ‘Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine’ (2023), on the academic boycott of Israel.

Dr Mitri Raheb is a Palestinian pastor, theologian and author of many books including ‘Decolonising Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible’. Founder and President of Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, Palestine. Former pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church. 

Mouin Rabbani is a Palestinian-Dutch analyst and commentator on Palestinian Israeli affairs. 

Diana Buttu is a Palestinian Canadian lawyer, former advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation PLO, citizen of Israel and host of the podcast This Is Palestine.

Dr Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian doctor, activist, academic and writer. Author of many books including ‘One State’ and ‘In Search of Fatima’.

Dr Ghada reflected on the ongoing genocide in Palestine, provided commentary on the recent recognition of the state of Palestine by some Western countries and gave us a few cues on how to mobilise for an envisioned free and liberated Palestine. 

Conversation with Rami Khouri. A Palestinian-American academic and journalist. Founder of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI), at the American University of Beirut. A Harvard Nieman Journalism Fellow, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs in Arab East Jerusalem, and a senior fellow at the Arab Centre Washington, DC.

What does it mean for the Palestinians that some of the major Western countries, including France, UK and Australia, intend to recognise the state of Palestine this month?

How significant is the recent UN report as well as the voting of the International Association of Genocide Scholars voting that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza?

What are the consequence of Israel bombing Hamas delegation in Doha?

Rev Dr Sizer is a retired Christ Church Vicar and a member of Jewish Network for Palestine. Author of “Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon” and “Zion’s Christian Soldiers: The Bible, Israel and the Church”.

The conversation explores the following important questions:

- What is the relationship between the secular nationalist ideology of Zionism and the theological concept of the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land of Palestine?

- How did evangelical Christians and Jews manage to unite over support for Zionism and Israel despite the vast theological, political, and cultural differences? 

- How did Christian Zionism use the Western Judeo-Christian identity to entrench the geopolitical realities of the settler colonial project in Palestine? 

- Why have many Western religious institutions been silent over the genocide in Gaza or indeed have sided with Israel?

Professor Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and political scientist and professor at the University of Exeter.

A former senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa and author of many books including “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” and “Lobbying for Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic”.