Episode 26: How Israel is behind Forward Thinking

First aired on 23 July 2022

Is Israel outsourcing its normalization drive among Muslims, to a well-known conflict resolution front for British intelligence? Forward Thinking is an organization that explicitly seeks to normalize Israel within the middle east and among the Muslim community elsewhere.

In an address to the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School the founder of Forward Thinking and veteran NATO employee Oliver McTernan explains the origins of the organization at a NATO Conference, where the Commandant of the IDF law school, Amos Giora said 'we can't leave this as a conference. We've got to see how this can be taken forward. According to McTernan, this was what 'sparked the idea' of Forward Thinking.

Of course, Amos Giora was the highest legal opinion in the Israeli military and was tasked with constructing legal arguments to justify the bombing of civilian sites like schools in Gaza.

The roots of Forward Thinking can also be found in another long-time NATO employee and ‘Honorary Major’ in the Specialist Group Military Intelligence part of the British Army Intelligence Corps, Chris Donnelly's trip to the Herziliya security conference in the apartheid entity. The future director of Forward Thinking attended this key Israeli military and intelligence conference in 2007 alongside a colleague of his and McTernan, Daniel Lafayeedney. Both Donnelly and McTernan also shared positions on the Institute for Statecraft with Lafayeedney, however at the Herziliya conference, Lafayeedney stated his organizational home as BICOM, Britain's largest Israel lobby group.

Forward Thinking's own trustees report states that it worked closely with Likud during the Netanyahu government, to bring the previously pro-Palestinian Sinn Fein to the table of normalization with Israel. It was a long process of subverting Sinn Fein and defanging their pro-Palestinian stance.

A report in the Belfast daily paper the Irish News revealed: "Meetings have been arranged by a mediation group known as Forward Thinking which arranged for a Likud delegation to meet with local politicians while on a trip to Belfast earlier this year."

This engagement with the Israeli regime is something Forward Thinking openly takes credit for bringing about.

Oliver McTernan can be seen at the Israeli regime-funded Menachim Begin Heritage Center celebrating the normalization of relations between Egypt and Israel, alongside "senior figures across the Israeli political spectrum." Menachim Begin was the head of the Zionist terror organization Irgun, which bombed the King David Hotel killing 91 people, many of them British. Forward Thinking proudly describes the terrorist Begin as having a "legacy of making peace."

Hosting a lunchtime seminar for colleagues on the theology behind the Arab Spring with Oliver McTernan and Said Ferjani. Ferjani is a former head of Policy for the Muslim Association of Britain and later was an important member of the Ennhada party in Tunisia.

Other posts on the Forward Thinking website describe "influential Israelis helping develop our programs" and show Oliver McTernan in the Knesset "securing feedback on recent activities."

Muslim organizations, political figures and leaders must be under no illusion, Forward Thinking and Oliver McTernan work for Israel.