Martin Indyk

Martin Indyk was born in 1951 in London, United Kingdom, to a Jewish family who had immigrated from Poland.[3] His family moved to Australia, where he was raised, growing up in the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag. His older brother is the Australian academic and publisher Ivor Indyk.

He graduated from the University of Sydney in 1972. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Indyk spent time volunteering in a kibbutz in southern Israel, an experience he has called "a defining moment in my life."[4] He returned to graduate school and received a PhD in international relations from the Australian National University in 1977. He married Jill Collier, with whom he had two children, Sarah and Jacob. They have divorced.

Indyk immigrated to the United States by 1982 and started work with a lobbying group in Washington, DC. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1993.[5] Indyk is a Reform Jew.[3]

In 1982, Indyk began working as a deputy research director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.[6][7] From 1985 Indyk served eight years as the founding Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research institute specializing in analysis of Middle East policy.[8]

He has been an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he taught Israeli politics and foreign policy. Indyk has also taught at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, and the Department of Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Indyk has published widely on U.S. policy toward the Arab–Israeli peace process, on U.S.–Israeli relations, and on the threats to Middle East stability posed by Iraq and Iran.

He served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and as senior director of Near East and South Asian Affairs at the United States National Security Council. While at the NSC, he served as principal adviser to the President and the National Security Advisor on Arab–Israeli issues, Iraq, Iran, and South Asia. He was a senior member of Secretary of State Warren Christopher's Middle East peace team and served as the White House representative on the U.S. Israel Science and Technology Commission.

He served two stints as United States Ambassador to Israel, from April 1995 to September 1997, and from January 2000 to July 2001. He was the first and so far, the only, foreign-born US ambassador to Israel.

He has served on the board of the New Israel Fund.[9] Indyk currently serves on the Advisory Board for DC based non-profit America Abroad Media.[10]

On July 29, 2013, Indyk was appointed by President Barack Obama as Washington's special Middle East envoy for the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.[11] Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas favored his appointment.[12] He resigned from this position June 27, 2014, returning to the Brookings Institution as its vice president and director for foreign policy.[13][14] In 2018, he left Brookings for the Council on Foreign Relations.[15]

In 2000, Indyk was placed under investigation by the FBI after allegations arose that he improperly handled sensitive material by using an unclassified laptop computer on an airplane flight to prepare his memos of meetings with foreign leaders.[16][17][18] There was no indication that any classified material had been compromised, and no indication of espionage.[19]

Indyk was "apparently ... the first serving U.S. ambassador to be stripped of government security clearance."[19] The Los Angeles Times reported that "veteran diplomats complained that Indyk was being made a scapegoat for the kinds of security lapses that are rather common among envoys who take classified work home from the office."[19] Indyk's clearance was suspended but was reinstated the next month, "for the duration of the current crisis," given "the continuing turmoil in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza [Strip] and for compelling national security reasons."[19]

While promoting his book, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy, on 8 January 2009, Indyk engaged in a discussion of Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations with Norman Finkelstein of Democracy Now!. Indyk indicated he felt "sandbagged" by not being informed "that I was going to be in some kind of debate with Norman Finkelstein. I’m not interested in doing that. I’m also not here as a spokesman for Israel".[27]

• Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. 2009. Simon & Schuster
• Bending History: Barack Obama's Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution Press, February 3, 2012

• Martin S. Indyk, Brookings Institution
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• The Middle East Isn’t Worth It Anymore

With few vital American interests still at stake there, the U.S. should finally set aside its grandiose ambitions for the chaotic region. WSJ 2020

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