INDYK, MARTIN

INDYK, MARTIN (1951– ), U.S. ambassador to Israel. Indyk was born in London and raised and educated in Australia where he received his bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Sydney and his Ph.D. from Australian National University. He became an advisor of the Australian prime minister on the Middle East. Under the influence of Steven Rosen, the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) foreign policy expert, Indyk moved to Washington, D.C. to join the AIPAC staff. In 1985 he helped found the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a non-profit, tax-exempt think tank which had been supported by many significant AIPAC lay leaders, and was its first executive director. Under his leadership it became an influential institute not only on matters relating to Israel but the entire Middle East and it was a place where diverse views could be discussed. It maintained a formal and deliberate separation from AIPAC, whose task is political, not intellectual, and which according to American law is not tax-exempt. During the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns Indyk was a foreign policy advisor to the democratic presidential candidates and was appointed special assistant to the president and senior director for the Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council when President Bill Clinton came to office. Two years later he was named ambassador to Israel, the first Jew to be named to that sensitive position. On the eve of his being named ambassador he became an American citizen. His service in Israel coincided with the Oslo Peace Process and Indyk was influential in the conduct of the negotiations that followed, often to the chagrin of right-wing Israeli politicians who were put off by his support of the peace process. He faced the type of slurs from right-wing Israeli officials that would have been regarded as antisemitic had they been uttered by anyone other than a Jew. In fact, under Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross, several of the key figures representing the Clinton Administration were deeply committed Jews, committed to the peace process as well. In 1998 Indyk was named assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, and in 2000 he returned to Israel as ambassador for the remainder of the Clinton Administration where he was deeply engaged with the failed negotiations among Prime Minister Barak, Chairman Arafat, and President Clinton at Camp David and later at Taba. President Clinton broke the barrier that had prevented a Jew from representing the United States in Israel with the nomination of Martin Indyk, whose successor was Daniel Kurtzer, an Orthodox rabbi who had previously served as ambassador to Egypt. Having left government service, Indyk has directed the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L.S. Maisel and I. Forman, Jews in American Politics (2001). (Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)