By Gary Glancy
gary.glancy@shj.com
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009

As a society that's "not very historically oriented," it is almost impossible for Americans to grasp the depth of disconnect in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So says New York Times Israel bureau chief Ethan Bronner, who will speak at Wofford College at 7 p.m. Thursday in Leonard Auditorium in Wofford's Main Building. The program is free and open to the public.

Americans have difficulty understanding the two sides, Bronner said via telephone Tuesday from Jerusalem, because of "the way people in a conflict feel so strongly that they're living some larger historical process through their daily lives."

"Therefore," Bronner said, "what may seem like relatively trivial elements of the dispute — like ‘why can't you just get over it' — from an American perspective, for both sides of this conflict it feels very much that they're sort of walking in history's footsteps constantly, and that they are part of some larger process to set history back on its right course."

Bronner, the Times' Israel bureau chief since March 2008 following four years as deputy foreign editor in New York, comes to Spartanburg after having met Wofford archaeologist Byron McCane in Jerusalem this summer. McCane, the Albert C. Outler Professor and chair of the department of religion at Wofford, was at a dig in Israel, during which he was interviewed for a Discovery Channel documentary called "Who Was Jesus?"

Bronner said that while he will spend time talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself, he's also seeking to raise the question of why students living and studying at a prosperous college in the U.S. should care about a struggle so far from home.

"I'm hoping to put it into a larger context for undergraduates," he said, "so they can think about, essentially, why foreign news matters."

According to Bronner, despite American efforts to curb the hostilities, the situation remains "not very optimistic," and he doesn't get a sense the younger generation on either side is ready to take the reins in a movement toward peace.

"One thing that you could argue is that there were a lot of expectations in the past, and the expectations weren't met, and the disappointment was so great that violence resulted," Bronner said.

Bronner said the two sides are also split on the election of President Obama last year. While the Arab and Muslim worlds share the optimism of many around the world on America's new leadership, Bronner said, "Israel has a much more worried outlook because President Bush was so unreservedly pro-Israel."

"It's clear," he added, "that President Obama has set as one of his main goals to reconfigure the relationship between the United States and the Arab and Muslims worlds, and it's felt here that that is being done at the expense of the warmth that existed between Israel and the U.S. So there is quite a lot of worry in Israel whether President Obama is sufficiently in their corner."