The last time I visited Ambassador Martin Indyk in his elegant Upper West Side New York apartment in May, he made me matza brei. It was Pesach and I was passing through New York on my way to spend a month in Germany as a distinguished fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, doing a deep dive into the state of antisemitism in a democracy that has both historical and current-day significance. But that’s another story.
Martin looked frail and weak, but he insisted on going to the kitchen while I caught up with his wife Gale Hodges Burt, former social secretary for President Ronald Reagan and the founding chair of the American Academy in Berlin.
Once Martin returned with the perfectly cooked scrambled eggs and matzah, served professionally with cinnamon and sugar powder, we delved into the issues of the moment: the U.S. presidential elections, Gaza war, Iranian proxies’ aggressions toward Israel.
When I said goodbye that morning, I knew it might be my last visit with a man who had come to be a mentor, a role model and a friend.
At Ambassador Indyk’s shiva three months later, in a beautiful Georgetown villa filled with Washington, D.C. royalty, the Rabbi reciting Kaddish described Martin as the Sisyphus of Middle East peace. He couldn’t have used a better character to depict Indyk’s lifelong obsession: an end to the generations-old conflict in the region. Even in his last days, he published a piece in Foreign Affairs Magazine titled “The Strange Resurrection of the Two State Solution: How an Unimaginable War Could Bring About the Only Imaginable Peace.” He simply would not give up — just as Sisyphus wouldn’t, and of course, neither should we.
The Council on Foreign Relations, The Brookings Institution and Israel Policy Forum, all policy organizations with whom Indyk had an affiliation, eulogized him to their communities in a similar fashion.
A veteran diplomat and author, Ambassador Indyk devoted his illustrious career — both in and out of government — to pursuing a path to peace in the Middle East. A practitioner and scholar, he served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2000 to 2001. He also served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council from 1993 to 1995, as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs in the U.S. Department of State from 1997 to 2000, and as President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the Israeli–Palestinian negotiations from 2013 to 2014.
A veteran diplomat and author, Ambassador Indyk devoted his illustrious career—both in and out of government—to pursuing a path to peace in the Middle East.
Outside of government, Ambassador Indyk spent decades in leadership positions at prominent U.S. think tanks, including the Center for Middle East Policy and the Brookings Institution. He was also the founding executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy for eight years.
Ambassador Indyk was a leading expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as U.S. relations with Israel and the Arab states. His writing featured prominently in Foreign Affairs and other influential outlets. Throughout his career, his was a rare, trusted voice within an otherwise polarized public debate on U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
He was the author of “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East” and coauthor, with Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Lieberthal, of “Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy.” He published his final book, one that was very close to his heart, “Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy,” a major work of diplomatic history published in 2021, which offered important lessons for current and future U.S. policy toward Middle East peacemaking.
He was all these things, but to me, he will always be my loving friend. Finding mentors who live up to the values they teach can be rare. I was blessed and lucky to have found Martin in my camp. Ambassador Martin Indyk will be dearly missed.
Dr. Sharon S. Nazarian is President, Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation and Chair of Community Advisory Board, UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.
