Reporting about Israel and the Middle East is an important but thankless task. A Middle East reporting assignment means catching flak from pro-Israel and pro-Arab groups who often see stories through their own lenses. Here's an example: One paragraph in a Dec. 20 story by Scott Wilson, then Jerusalem bureau chief and now foreign editor, stated: "Except for a relatively small Druze population, Arabs are excluded from military service mandatory for all but ultra-Orthodox Jews, an essential shared experience of Israeli life and a traditional training ground for future political leaders."