Talk:Martin Indyk

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Winged Blades of Godric in topic RfC on alleged antisemitic remarks

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Razol2 (talkcontribs) 09:52, 29 May 2006

Untitled edit

This article looks like it was ripped nearly completely from here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Indyk.html In addition to this there are plenty of POV statements, that WINEP is neo-conservative springs to mind. Any ideas about what to do? I'll remove the POV but in regards to potential copyright infringement/plagerism, what do we do? || Martin Indyk is the most failed advisor in the history of the United States. It is safe to say that he is partially responsible for the deaths of many jews in Israel due to his failed Oslo Accords and his continuing refusal to take responsibility for this failed policy.

Martin Indyk humiliated himself. It's unfortunate. But it's a fact. edit

Even an honest fan of Indyk and the policies he represents would still have to admit that during the 2009 DemocracyNow interview, the man embarrassed himself. Watch it yourself if you have any doubt. Indyk's first few words were how unprepared he was to debate Norman Finkelstein (even though his book attempted to do so). Considering Indyk was former ambassador to Israel, an adult of apparently considerable intelligence, and that Democracy Now is a serious program, this encounter was therefore a rather embarrassing career move worthy of mention and belongs in "Working Life" to avoid NPOV.

Hence why I support the following addition to "Working Life": "In an early 2009 television interview with Democracynow.org, Martin Indyk humiliated himself by being unprepared and unwilling to discuss current Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations with Norman Finkelstein (even though they were mentioned in his book). Indyk claimed that he had been "sandbagged" because he had only agreed to talk about his new book. Finkelstein then thoroughly refuted Indyk's position made on specific points in Indyk's new book."

Please explain modifications and please avoid editing whole items out of existence without explaining yourself. Thanks! :) --Behemoth101 (talk) 22:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)Behemoth101Reply

  • I added the DN interview link to this as well as the Finkelstien page on the morning the show aired, but I'm not the deleter that is mentioned above. I'm writing this to weigh-in briefly to say that the statement "Martin Indyk humiliated himself" is boldfaced POV in relation to Wikipedia rules, and I think the paragraph should be re-written. Or maybe just deleted. Opinions are innately boring, and one gets into trouble when forming attachments to them. Peace off. Sstteevvee (talk) 22:35, 17 January 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • "humiliated himself" may be too strong. I am in favor of keeping the facts that he was unprepared though, because Indyk himself said he was. Finkelstein refuted every single point on its own merit.
  • I undid all unnecessary edits as of 2/5/09. Please do not use this page for POV issues and as your private sandbox. The purpose of this article is to have an accurate biography. Wikipedia doesn't exist to lionize lobbyists. Thanks! --Behemoth101 (talk) 17:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Behemoth101Reply
I reorganized this page, created sections, brought sources, copyedited muddled English and re-wrote the non-encyclopedic lead. Mr. Behemoth has deleted all this on some warped grounds that only he understands. This article now follows the standard for biographical articles on Wikipedia. If anyone has additional sourced information they are welcome to include it. If not, please leave it alone.--Gilabrand (talk) 19:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Everything Mr Gilabrand deleted was sourced, particularly the sections I added, and if anything wasn't, perhaps he could corroborate these sections next time before deleting them without comment. --[[User 20:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Behemoth101

After reviewing, in detail, the transcript of Indyk's interview on Democracy Now, it clear that the section on the article completely miscarachterize the debate. Indyk was not "unprepared" to talk about the subject of his book, he simply refused to debate the topic with Finkelstein since those were not the conditions of him appearing on the show. I furthermore see no reason why this interview, compared to the 10s of 100s of interviews and talk show appearances Indyk has made, deserve to be referenced in this article. Therefore, I deleted the entire section devoted to Indyk's Democracy Now appearance. Jmv2120 (talk) 00:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)Reply


"I was not invited on to debate with Norman Finkelstein, and I’m not prepared to do that." -Martin Indyk I'm not sure what you mean by him not being "unprepared" when he himself explains he is not prepared to talk to Norman Finkelstein about his own book. To be perfectly frank, it's quite obvious that Indyk adheres to the Zionist lecture circuit party line, which is to refuse to deal with any of Finkelstein's points on their own merit. Indyk and all major media schillers for Israel just try to pretend like Finkelstein doesn't exist, which is hard to do when he's sitting right next to them. Perhaps Democracy Now had to slip Finkelstein in at the last second, but I fail to see how that makes any excuse for Indyk to disqualify himself from intelligent conversation. Hence why Indyk squirmed and made excuses for himself. So either Indyk is an unprepared fool, or he is a complete liar. Either way, he presents himself as an unprepared fool to avoid responding to any of Finkelstein's criticisms.--Behemoth101 (talk) 19:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Behemoth101Reply

Indyk is not a "lobbyist" edit

I deleted the word "lobbyist" from the first sentence of the biography because as a matter of fact Indyk has never been a lobbyist. He worked in the Research Department of AIPAC (the Israel lobby) for a total of 18 months, 27 years ago. Since then Indyk has directed a Middle East think tank, held several senior positions in the U.S. government, and spent the last eight years at the Brookings Institution. Kalora (talk) 22:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC)Reply


The flawed premise of Kalora's statement is that a think tank cannot be a lobbying force. AIPAC's research department fits into both categories. --Behemoth101 (talk) 04:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)Behemoth101Reply

The flawed premise of Behemoth is that something that Indyk did 25 years ago still renders him a lobbyist. He is not. He had a distinguished career in government and has worked since then in an independent think tank. His views on many things are diametrically opposed to those of AIPAC. See for instance his article in Foreign Affairs, written five years ago, in which he calls for international forces to intervene in the West Bank and Gaza, or his recent interview in Yediot Achronot. ----


Was that an unsigned comment? In any event, I'm reversing the edits based on the same grounds as I stated above. --Behemoth101 (talk) 04:01, 18 June 2009 (UTC)Behemoth101Reply

Indyk is a corruption/diminutive of the Russian Indyuk...a turkey 120.16.47.109 (talk) 11:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Camp David Accords Involvement? edit

I've removed the following sentence from the opening paragraph: "He is arguably best known as one of the lead U.S. negotiators at the Camp David Accords."

There is no mention of Mr. Indyk's involvement in the 1978 Camp David Accords on his biography pages at The Brookings Institute or The Council on Foreign Relations. It is highly unlikely that at the age of 26 (and 16 years before he took up US citizenship) he was one of the lead US negotiators at that meeting, doubly so in light of the fact that he had only received his doctorate the year before from a university in Australia, the country of his youth.

Besides, the very subjective "arguably best known" would need to be backed up with a reference or citation, even if he had been involved. 80.42.156.59 (talk) 05:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Further evidence casting doubt on the claim that Mr. Indyk was involved in the Camp David Accords is found in the introduction of his autobiography, Innocent Abroad. He writes, "I could never have imagined when I arrived with my wife, Jill, and my infant daughter, Sarah, in America in 1982 — as a visiting professor from Australia on sabbatical at Columbia University — that ten years later I would join the White House staff of a new president and become responsible for helping to craft Clinton's Middle Eastern strategy as his special assistant in the National Security Council." Firstly, how, and why, would an Australian, who hadn't even lived in the U.S before 1982, be "one of the lead U.S. negotiators at the Camp David Accords" in 1978? Secondly, why would Mr. Indyk be so impressed with joining the White House staff in 1993 if he had been crafting Middle Eastern strategy fifteen years before for President Carter? It just doesn't make sense. 80.42.153.170 (talk) 20:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

You are perfectly correct and I applaud your sensitive approach to my revert. In my defense: your first contribution on this discussion page (above) appeared in the same minute as I reverted the article – when I looked, there was no discussion. Anyway, it's all good now. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:46, 21 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

US representative to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks? edit

I removed the paragraph dealing with speculation that Indyk might be appointed US representative to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. This indeed has been reported but it's just speculation at this point, and other RS material (http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-palestinians-agreed-to-talks-indyk-reports-premature/) contradicts it. Perhaps better to wait until he actually IS appointed (or is not, as the case may be). Drmikeh49 (talk) 06:37, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Martin Indyk. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 01:17, 17 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

RfC on alleged antisemitic remarks edit

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Should we include alleged antisemitic remarks by Indyk in the article?--Hajj Alman (talk) 23:31, 14 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Survey edit

  • Support It's sourced and relevant. Maybe we could improve the attribution and reduce the length (maybe even add some response by Indyk himself), but we shouldn't hide this information just because is controversial.--Hajj Alman (talk) 23:35, 14 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
  • Exclude unless better sources can be found. The source is not the Algemeiner, it's Sheldon Adelson's JNS.org, which should be considered a partisan source, not a reliable source for facts for a BLP. — MShabazz Talk/Stalk 11:13, 15 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
  • Exclude for now Both Algemeiner and JNS.org show no editorial oversite in the "about us" section, nor any other information about themselves other than what amounts to a puff-piece touting their benefits. This wouldn't satisfy Wikipedia's requirement for a reliable source on that basis alone. Exclude for now, unless it's proven to be a reliable source, per WP:BLP К Ф Ƽ Ħ 16:02, 16 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Indyk's comments were recorded, and there's no doubt that he said what he said. BLP only goes so far.Victor Black (talk) 02:57, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
That's flatly incorrect. Please stop making up things, especially about living people — it's not only offensive but sanctionable on this site. Far from there being "no doubt," the JNS article makes clear that this is speculation: "Indyk reportedly said"; "The reported remarks"; "Farley Weiss, president of the National Council of Young Israel, told JNS.org, 'I hope he didn't say such things." Neutralitytalk 05:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
  • Exclude' Difference between mentioning how jerky the subejct is, and quoting his filthy mouth. L3X1 (distant write) 04:36, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
  • Exclude. Unverified, inflammatory gossip at this point. If this started to get serious mainstream coverage, then yeah, we'd have to mention it appropriately and in context. But it hasn't reached that point. Neutralitytalk 05:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
  • Exclude. Not a reliable source.. WP:BLP requires us to take extra care. No mainstream coverage at the moment, and perhaps with good reason. SW3 5DL (talk) 12:29, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.