While working for the Sydney Morning Herald, Rodgers won the Australian Journalist of the Year Award in 1979 for his reporting on East Timor. He served as Australian Ambassador to Israel from 1994 to 1997. Since then he has been a consultant on foreign affairs and trade, and has written regularly for the press about Middle East affairs. In 2001 he took up writing full-time. His books include Herzl's Nightmare : One Land, Two People (2004).