Martin Indyk’s ‘conversion’

Back in the late 1980s, when I was working in Washington as a writer/researcher on the Middle East, with several years of experience as a Beirut-based correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and other serious MSM outlets, and two books (on the PLO and Lebanon) already to my name, there was another researcher in town, about my age, who was much better plugged-in to the corridors of power and to sources of seemingly endless funding than I was. His name was Martin Indyk. He hadn’t actually done any major writing or research projects by then. But oh, he had been deputy research director at AIPAC! (Working for the infamous Steve Rosen.) And he parlayed that into getting funding from some big California-based money people to set up his own, always staunchly pro-Israeli “think tank”, the so-called Washington Institute for Near East Policy…
Like me, Indyk had been born in England. He arrived in Washington via a childhood and education in Australia. I came via my seven years of on-the-ground-experience in Lebanon and other Arab countries. Then in 1993, on the eve of Bill Clinton’s inauguration as president, Indyk received extraordinarily rapid naturalization as a U.S. citizen and immediately went to work in Clinton’s White House as his senior adviser on Middle East policy.
You see, when it comes to the pro-Israeli crowd, having other nationalities or dual or triple nationalities is an easy-come-easy-go business inside the U.S. political elite. Australian to American? No problem– provided you’re well-connected with the pro-Israeli in-crowd, like Indyk. American to Israeli? Again, a matter of moments if you happen to be long-time “American” scholar turned suddenly Israeli diplomatic rep, Michael Oren.
At the time, when I wrote something about the rapidity of Indyk’s acquisition of U.S. citizenship, he picked up the phone and started screaming at me, accusing me of being an “anti-Semite.” “Oh,” I asked him, “I assume we are talking on the record here?”
He slammed down the phone. What a baby he was. I don’t think we’ve spoken since then.
So… Indyk went on to have a long and notable career working in the Clinton administration, first as the top “Middle East expert” in the Clinton White House and then as Clinton’s ambassador to Israel. He later wrote about those years in his stunningly mis-titled book Innocent Abroad: An Intimate History of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. (The title is inaccurate in many ways… “Innocent”?? “Peace” diplomacy?? But it is also stunningly inappropriate. I mean, would anyone really want an “innocent” to be advising the president on an area as important as the Middle East?)
While working for the Clinton administration, Indyk bore a huge degree of responsibility for many outstandingly bad policies, including:

    1. The administration’s complete failure to follow up on the diplomatic opening the Norwegians handed them on a plate with the Oslo Accords; and Washington’s complete failure, in particular, to hold both parties to the accord accountable for working in good faith to meet the deadline specified in it of May 1999 for completion of a final peace agreement.
    With Indyk’s advice constantly ringing in his ears– and all his own insecurities as a young president who had weaseled his way out of military service in the 1970s– Clinton stayed trapped in a posture of complete subservience to Israel’s older, much more experienced, and battle-hardened Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He never put an ounce of pressure on him. Rabin took his time implementing Oslo… and made numerous fatal concessions to the settlers along the way. But Clinton (and Indyk’s) adoration and provision of huge financial and diplomatic benefits to Israel continued unabated.
    Only in his very last months in office– ways after the 1999 deadline had come and gone– did Clinton even start to stir himself to mention the idea of a final peace agreement. It was ways too late. The Second Intifada broke out… Oh, and Clinton then sided completely with the even more dreadful (but also “battle hardened”) Ehud Barak as they came out of the failed Camp David talks in 2000 and jointly blamed Yasser Arafat for its failure…
    Thanks for all the “advice” you gave along the way there, Martin Indyk!!
    2. In early 1993, the U.S. was still dealing with the aftermath of the it first war in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the 1991 “liberation” of Kuwait. People in the US policy elite were debating what the correct U.S. “posture” in the Gulf area should be. Indyk’s signal contribution to that was to successfully persuade the president that the posture should be one of “dual containment”– containment, that is, directed against both Iraq and Iran. In both cases, that meant ratcheting up the sanctions that had long been in place against those countries. In the case of Iraq, the sanctions maintained throughout the entire Clinton presidency were so draconian that they resulted in the otherwise preventable deaths of around 500,000 of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens, and the destruction of most of the country’s previously well-developed social and economic infrastructure… Not so “innocent” there, either, Martin Indyk…

Well, I could write about many more of the nefarious episodes in this man’s past… But now, I have to take a deep breath and recognize that he has recently, uh, been undergoing something of an interesting conversion in his attitudes and behaviors.
Here he is now, on the board of the generally excellent “New Israel Fund”, and defending it quite robustly (here, for an Australian audience) from the slings and arrows being sent its way by Gerald Steinberg and other representatives of Israel’s new hard right.
I welcome Martin Indyk to the ranks of reason and good values that he seems to edging toward, at this point. I don’t, however, think anyone should give him a free pass for his past record. The Clinton years, and the role he played in them, still need to be quite honestly examined.

10 thoughts on “Martin Indyk’s ‘conversion’”

  1. Ultimately Israel’s ‘friends’ have to sober up and recognise that those crusty old reactionaries, dyed-in-the-wool veteran zionists, cynical and suspicious graduates from a school of very hard knocks, with all the youthful pacifism and idealism knocked out of them, are actually fascists.
    Yes, folks, the sons and daughters of Irgun and Mr Stern’s social circle are thorough racists, planning genocide and practising ethnic cleansing in a manner that would have made the settlers in Tasmania blush.
    And there aren’t two ways about it: decent people can simply not be on the same side as those responsible (and this includes not only government but most of the opposition parties in the Knesset) for the events in Gaza, last year and up to today.
    If Martin Indyk has begun to understand this or begun to begin understanding it, that is very good news.

  2. Thanks for that background on Indyk – I wasn’t aware of quite what a strong influence he had on Clinton and others. To be honest, I had always thought of him as slightly less shrill and just a wee bit more reasonable than most of the Washington AIPAC set – not saying much I know. Seems I was wrong. Still, at least he’s not quite as intellectually dishonest as the truly awful Dennis Ross.

  3. Helen
    Thanks for the Indyk article. I wish you would do the same for the other like fellows. How about Dennis Ross, then there is always Elliot Abrams.
    I am convinced that most of the guys advising the US Gov. hold Israeli passports as well. Think of Wolfowitz, Pearle, etc. etc.
    Additionally I would love to see a listing of the various think tanks engaged in Middle East commentary along with their backing and biasis. E.G. when you see WINEP you know you are dealing with AIPAC, etc.
    Delighted you are back @ JWN. So sorry for the diversion you experienced. Their loss. Please please keep up the good work.
    Regards
    Robert

  4. My understanding is that Indyk not only received his education in Australia but also worked there in the intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, where he was a Middle East analyst. If this is so, he will have visited Washington once or twice as an ONA analyst, and that may have been where his connections were first forged. He is the only ONA analyst ever to have become ambassador for a foreign country.

  5. Most people especially in ME knew the fact that the inner circles of US administrations are full of pro-Israeli folks.
    Whatever names and passport it is never been concerned by most Americans in facts its far from US citizen concerned and recognized.
    Even Iraq invasion although there were many US people against the war itself not because of Iraq or ME, but G.W. Bush have almost majority support behind his administration from both side of political parties to go to war.
    So whatever here Helena said about Indyk there were and there are tens more like him I don’t downgrading his credentials but here Helens try to do so but the reality not just in US politics, its wider like UN, and other internationals post and ranking you will find more Americans or Britt’s who are very pro-Israelis holding high levels of major post around the world.
    Even those charity agencies like Tear Fund is headed by a women born in Israeli… can’t be less Israeli than others..

  6. And let’s not forget Rahm Emmanuel, who never had time or the inclination to serve in the US military, but did serve with the IDF.

  7. It is very refreshing to read your stories and see how badly tainted US policy in the Middle East has remained. Some day….some day…we will back the UN in their condemnation of the atrocities that have occured and the poor life of those contained, corralled and abused. Good luck in getting the media to help tell your tales.

  9. Some day….some day…we will back the UN in their condemnation of the atrocities that have occured and the poor life of those contained, corralled and abused.
    let go for loooong sleep….. Iraq is a recent example of “trocities that have occured and the poor life of those contained, corralled and abused.” these are Amaricans they are NOT like Indik, the list start with but not end: GW Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, a thug with credentials more sophisticated than Indik, thug Bremer, the lire Colin Powell……
    You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is

    On September, 28 million copies of the anti-Islamic propaganda documentary Obsession were distributed free of charge in what were considered the “swing” states in the past presidential election campaign. This effort was clearly designed to leverage the idea in the minds of some Americans that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim (he is not), seeking to identify him with the images and statements of Muslims portrayed in the video. These portrayals give the impression that Islam is a fanatical, bloodthirsty religion, whose adherents are hell-bent on destroying America.
    The shameless allegation that Islam is the new fascism would be bad enough were it presented in isolation. However, it is coupled with allegations that Muslims supported Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. Such allegations are a foul misrepresentation of the historical record and serve to dishonor the memory of all of the courageous Muslims who selflessly fought and died in defense of the European democracies, even though many of their own lands were still suffering under the yoke of European colonization.
    At the heart of these baseless and base allegations is the fact that the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, had close ties to the German leader Adolf Hitler, and even spent part of the war in Berlin. While this much is true, al-Husayni’s sentiments were not those of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians, to say nothing of the rest of the world’s Muslims. To use al-Husayni’s ties to Hitler as a means to defame and discredit Islam and Muslims as fascists is misleading and has to be challenged.
    In fact, there were several Palestinian brigades and tens of thousands of Palestinians in the British Army who actively fought the spread of fascism. The existence of these Palestinian brigades was more indicative of the mood of the Arab and Muslim masses than al-Husayni’s misguided actions. Therefore, when al-Husayni issued his call for a Muslim jihad against the allied forces his plea was largely ignored. The fascist jihad never materialized. The reason for that is simple. It had no significant support from the masses of Muslims.

  10. Just to note that many trolls have been coming here to leave hate-filled, escalatory ‘comments’ that in no way fit into the guidelines. I have deletd a bunch of those comments (and those that referred to them), and have banned a couple of the more egregious trolls completely.

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