Martin Sean Indyk (July 1, 1951 – July 25, 2024) was an Australian-American diplomat and foreign relations analyst with expertise in the Middle East.
Indyk was a distinguished fellow in International Diplomacy and later executive vice president at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. from 2001 to 2018.
Indyk served twice as United States Ambassador to Israel (1995–1997; 2000–2001) and also as Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs during the Clinton Administration.
Martin Indyk was born in 1951 in London, England, to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Poland. His mother had lived in Mandatory Palestine before emigrating to New Zealand while his father emigrated to Australia and settled in Sydney. His father was studying medicine in London at the time of his birth. The family settled in Australia during his childhood, and Indyk grew up in the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag. His older brother is the Australian academic and publisher Ivor Indyk.
Indyk graduated from the University of Sydney in 1972 with a Bachelor of Economics. He then moved to Israel for postgraduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While was living in Jerusalem preparing for university courses, the Yom Kippur War broke out, and Indyk spent the rest of the war volunteering on kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel, an experience he called "a defining moment in my life." Indyk stated that he had even considered immigrating to Israel at the time. He returned to graduate school and received a PhD in international relations from the Australian National University in 1977.
Indyk immigrated to the United States in 1982 and started work with a lobbying group in Washington, D.C. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1993, a week before joining the National Security Council. Indyk was a Reform Jew.
Indyk married Jill Collier, with whom he had two children, Sarah and Jacob. They later divorced. In 2013, he married Gahl Hodges Burt, a former aide to Henry Kissinger and a White House social secretary during the Ronald Reagan administration.
Political and diplomatic career
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. 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.
Indyk was an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he taught Israeli politics and foreign policy. Indyk 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 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.
Indyk served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and as senior director of Near East and South Asian Affairs at the 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.
Indyk served on the board of the New Israel Fund. Indyk later served on the advisory board for DC based non-profit America Abroad Media.
On 29 July 2013, Indyk took leave from the Brookings Institution and 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. Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas favored his appointment. He resigned from this position June 27, 2014, returning to the Brookings Institution as its vice president and director for foreign policy. In 2018, he left Brookings for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Indyk was a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2018 until his death in 2024.
In 2000, Indyk was placed under investigation by the FBI after allegations arose that he had improperly handled sensitive material by using an unclassified laptop computer on an airplane flight to prepare his memos of meetings with foreign leaders. There was no indication that any classified material had been compromised, and no indication of espionage.
Indyk was "apparently ... the first serving U.S. ambassador to be stripped of government security clearance." 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." 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."
Donations from Qatar to Brookings