Two years* after the New York Times public editor recommended his reassignment, Ethan Bronner is being replaced as Jerusalem bureau chief.

Today, the Times announced that Education editor Jodi Rudoren has been named Jerusalem bureau chief. Bronner will become the legal affairs reporter at the National desk.

"For those of us who worked with him as deputy foreign editor, it came as no surprise that Ethan Bronner could navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of foreign stories, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as smoothly as he has," foreign editor Joe Kahn and national editor Sam Sifton wrote in an internal memo, forwarded by a staffer. "Ethan's deep familiarity with Israel, his unerring sense of fairness, and his nose for what is really new in an exhaustively charted territory distinguished his work."

Bronner's 22-year-old son was* a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, a conflict of interest first raised by the website Electronic Intifada. Shortly thereafter, former public editor Clark Hoyt looked into the matter and found that, despite the 'unerring sense of fairness' mentioned above, Bronner's son's assignment put the bureau chief in a problematic position.

"Bronner is a superb reporter... But, stepping back, this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side," he wrote last February. "Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out."

"I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong," he continued. "But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F."

Despite Hoyt's recommendation, the paper did not reassign Bronner.

Rudoren, who covered Howard Dean and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, helped The Times win its first Emmy Award for Metro's One in 8 Million series, according to the memo.

"Like many good editors, though, Jodi is a reporter at heart, and a ferociously competitive one," Kahn and Sifton writes. "She put Chicago politics back on the national map during her stint there, and proved her mettle as a political correspondent during the 2004 presidential race. We're thrilled to have her take on the unusually demanding role of Jerusalem correspondent."