Prime Minister’s Office: Martin Indyk fabricated conversation with Netanyahu
Former U.S. Middle East envoy Martin Indyk lied twice about a supposed conversation he had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the funeral of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, a Prime Minister’s Office official said this week.
Martin Indyk. Credit: Robert D. Ward via Wikimedia Commons
The spat involving Indyk began following the airing of a PBS “Frontline” program about Netanyahu on Jan. 5. In an interview for the program, Indyk referred to a conversation he claimed he had with Netanyahu at Rabin’s funeral. Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, in Tel Aviv by a right-wing Jewish extremist. At the time, Indyk was the U.S. ambassador to Israel and Netanyahu was the Likud party leader as well as head of the Israeli opposition.
Indyk told PBS, “Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral. I remember Netanyahu saying to me: ‘Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.’”
In response to that comment, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a blanket denial on Wednesday, saying the conversation described by Indyk “never happened.”
A video of the funeral showed that Indyk was not sitting next to Netanyahu. Indyk tweeted later on Wednesday, “The conversation w Bibi took place on Nov 5/95 when we sat together at the Knesset ceremony to receive Rabin’s coffin to lie in state.”
This prompted the Prime Minister’s Office to issue another denial.
“After the first lying version was refuted, Indyk made up a second version, which was also a lie,” a Prime Minister’s Office statement said. “The prime minister never said the things Indyk attributed to him.”
A Likud statement said, “This is another blatant lie by Indyk, who never stops slandering and defaming the prime minister.”
Martin Indyk was born to a Jewish family in London. He grew up in the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag graduating from the University of Sydney in 1972. He received a PhD in international relations from the Australian National University in 1977.
Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org
Mr Indyk was (and, it appears, still is, albeit ‘unofficially’) a servant of the US State Department, an entity that is often as friendly to Israel as is Mr Bob Ashrawi.
Mr Indyk’s disputed “revelation’ reflects badly on him, not on Mr Netanyahu. At the time of the supposed conversation, Mr Rabin’s Oslo Accords had led to the murder of thousands of Jews by Arabs/’Palestinians’. Yasser Arafat called the Oslo Accords “the Arab Trojan Horse”; Mr Rabin called the murdered Jews ” sacrifices for peace.”
The Israeli voting public that had also gambled with wishful thinking was facing the reality of exploding buses, not fantasy; how many of them would have voted for Mr Rabin? The subsequent ascent of his political opponents to government suggests the answer.
it all comes down to who do you believe Bi Bi a renowned liar????
or Indyk a renowned honest broker?