In its June 16 edition, the Washington Post runs a major piece in its news section about GOP presidential candidates planning to be no-shows for conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s Israel-solidarity rally in Jerusalem on Aug. 24.  The four column headline above Rachel Weiner’s article on page A2 reads:  “Beck’s Israel rally hasn’t hooked GOP candidates.”

Weiner’s lead paragraph reads in similar vein:  “No major 2012 GOP presidential candidate currently plans to attend the August rally in Israel being held by conservative firebrand and outgoing Fox News host Glenn Beck.”

The clear impression left on readers is that Beck has been turned down by Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee and other GOP presidential hopefuls..

Except it’s a wrong, baseless impression.  As Weiner herself is forced to admit:  “A Beck spokesman said that none of the major candidates have yet been asked to attend.  No one has been contacted or asked to attend.”

So where’s the news peg for Weiner’s report that these candidates won’t join Beck at his rally in Jerusalem?  Why is their non-attendance newsworthy when they haven’t even yet been approached with an invitation?

Weiner finally owns up that the entire purpose of her article is to “contradict” a report “in an Israeli news organization” that several GOP presidential hopefuls will be at the Beck rally.

So the Washington Post  now decides to devote the bulk of the second page of its news section to refute an erroneous report in an Israeli news publication.  (As best as I can figure out, she apparently refers to the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronot).

Question:  Does this now portend a new departure in Washington Post journalism — to give major play to articles exposing errors in other publications around the world?  Because if Weiner’s piece is a precedent for such undertakings, the Post easily could use up its entire daily news report refuting erroneous articles in other news organs.  The Post could be expected to assume the mantle of  fact-checker-in-chief for media around the globe.   As a starter, I would recommend application of the Weiner precedent to errors aplenty in the New York Times, especially when it comes to Israel.

The Post’s non-story about Beck failing to “hook” GOP contenders, however, is not the only jab at Israel in the June 16 edition.  The Post’s proclivity to go to great lengths to take digs at Israel also pops up in the obituaries section:  “Al Schwimmer, 94 — Founder of Israel’s aerospace industry.”

The obit, by Elaine Wood, mentions how Schwimmer smuggled refurbished planes to Jews in Palestine “for the Arab-Israeli conflict, which began after the Jewish state of Israel was declared in May, 1948.”

Just one problem — and it’s a huge one — with this formulation to describe Israel’s War of Independence.  The Arab-Israeli conflict did not begin after Israel declared its independence in 1948.  It began many years before that.  The conflict was spawned by the Arab world’s determination to prevent creation of a Jewish state in Palestine — as ordained by the UN in its two-state 1947 partition resolution and previously by the League of Nations; and failing that, to eliminate the nascent Jewish state.

The conflict was already fully under way in 1929 when an Arab pogrom in Hebron, Judaism’s second holiest city and site of the Cave of Patriarchs, killed 67 Jews and ransacked their homes and synagogues.  While Jews had lived in Hebron for centuries, the Arabs were determined to expel them and with later pogroms succeeded for a while.

Add to that the Arab Revolt in the 1930s, a series of attacks on Jews also aimed at preventing creation of a Jewish state next to an Arab state (sounds familiar?)

So, why distort history so badly and falsely attribute the Arab-Israeli conflict to the creation of Israel rather than to century-old Arab rejectionism?

Because the Washington Post essentially has erased 3,000 years of Jewish ties to the Holy Land, and instead bought the Palestinian myth that Palestinians — not Jews — are the real indigenous people.  A complete inversion of real history.

And these are the lengths to which the Washington Post goes to defame and even delegitimize Israel under the banner of “news.”