As virtually everyone reading this blog knows well, reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the most trying journalistic challenges in the world.

Emotions run high. Readers see bias in every story. In fact, readers who support Israel sometimes see pro-Palestinian bias where Palestinian supporters see a pro-Israeli slant.

Rarely do those of us who try to navigate through this journalistic thicket discuss the difficulties.

Now, former Los Angeles TImes reporter Ashraf Khalil is offering some serious candor.

Ashraf, a friend who was one of the many talented reporters to be laid off as a result of the economic implosion of the newspaper industry, has written a journalistic exploration of the challenges facing reporters covering the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Calling it a "sobering glimpse" of Jerusalem journalism, Ashraf focuses on his frustrating attempts to report on an incident last year at the Israel-Jordan border where Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer said he was assaulted by Israeli security.

"In the end," Ashraf writes, "the truth of what happened to Mohammed Omer was sacrificed on the altar of the false deity known as 'balance.'"

As Ashraf notes, it was impossible to divine "the truth" of the incident because there were competing versions and few independent views.

In the piece, Ashraf sought to focus on an underlying problem: Israeli investigations of such allegations tend to fall short of being thorough. In this case, Ashraf writes, the Israeli investigators didn't talk to Mohammed or the medic who first treated the Gaza journalist.

I remember talking with Ashraf about this issue and encouraging him to pursue the story.

But because the details were so murky, Mohammed's case was probably not the best one to shine a spotlight on this issue.

There are other examples of Israeli investigations relying almost exclusively on talking to their own people and ignoring the Palestinians.

"The resulting article, while it went much further than any other report, still leaves me feeling dissatisfied," Ashraf writes. "It feels like it was written by a diligent and conscientious robot..."

"Reading it again more than a year after the incident, it’s still frustrating and dispiriting," he concludes. "What’s worse is the suspicion that if I had stayed on in Jerusalem and was presented with similar abuse allegation, I might not have taken up the case with such tenacity. Knowing how these things turn out, it simply wouldn’t have been worth the effort."

(Photo: Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem)