Responding to ThinkProgress, anti-Muslim activists Robert Spencer and Pam Geller disavowed any connections to John Joseph Jay, who recently wrote a blog post calling for the mass murder of politicians, journalists, and others. Geller and Spencer — leading members of the Islamophobia network — strongly denounced Jay’s calls for violence.

But, Jay’s name and signature appears on the articles of incorporation for American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an umbrella organization for which Geller is the executive director. Geller and Spencer claim Jay was never a board member and is not affiliated in any way. Geller writes that while Jay helped establish the organization, he is not a member of the board:

Last year I was in a rush to get the organization off the ground, and enlisted [Jay's] help and that of several others. At that time I hadn’t yet chosen the board members or the key players in the organization. Jay helped me out so I could get the incorporation papers filed, but was never a Board member or a part of the organizational structure in any way. He was gone almost as soon as he was there, and is not a member of AFDI.

Spencer emails a similar statement saying, Jay “is not on the Board now, never has been, and is not a member of the organization.”

However, this seems to conflict with a blog post Spencer wrote in August of last year after Jay stirred controversy with a different call to arms. In that post on his Jihad Watch blog, Spencer wrote about the “misrepresentations of some writings by John Jay, a member of the SIOA Board.” SIOA is Stop the Islamization Of America, an organization also headed by Geller and connected to AFDI.

ThinkProgress included this in our original post and asked Spencer to clarify. “He was never a board member. I don’t recall saying he was, but if I did, it was in error.” That was “was a mistake on my part,” Spencer wrote in another email after ThinkProgress provided a link to his post.

For newly-anointed GOP presidential frontrunner Herman Cain, foreign policy is not a strong suit. He was clueless about a key question in Israel-Palestinian conflict, bumbled a key strategic policy point with China, and strongly believes that Iraq should pay the U.S. back for invading their country.

Thus, it’s not entirely surprising that he couldn’t quite figure out his position on al Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki. The pizza mogul was originally of the mind that al-Awlaki, as an American citizen, “should be tried in our courts.” When asked if it would be legal for the Obama administration to issue a “kill order” for al-Awlaki, Cain replied, “In his case, no, because he’s an American citizen.” But after the administration announced the death of the wanted terrorist, Cain tried to wiggle out of his earlier position by offering two — We should try him in court but we don’t want him alive either:

But now that al-Awlaki has been killed by a drone missile, the 2012 GOP presidential candidate is “pleased that we have one less al Qaeda member that’s threatening us,” according to campaign spokesman JD Gordon.

When pressed on whether Cain’s feelings represent a departure from his earlier views, that al-Awlaki was an American citizen and deserved a trial, Gordon said, “It would be better to try him in court (but) if that’s not feasible, we don’t want him out there.”

Perhaps feeling the heat from the spotlight, Cain has been walking back quite a few of his statements. First calling Rick Perry’s racist rock “insensitive to a lot of black people in this country,” Cain immediately declared “I don’t care” about the slur the next day.

The anti-Muslim activist John Joseph Jay has issued a call for the mass murder of the leadership of both parties in Congress, the governors of seven states, and prominent academics, along with a demand to “burn all mosques. period.”

Jay helped in the founding of anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller’s group American Freedom Defense Initiative. AFDI is the umbrella organization of the prominent Stop the Islamization Of America (SOIA). Jay’s signature can be seen below those of Geller and fellow arch anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer on AFDI’s incorporation document (PDF), as Charles Johnson at LGF pointed out. The P.O. Box listed for Jay is also the same as Geller’s.

But while those organizations have stopped short of calls for violence, Jay crossed way over that line in a rambling post on his blog called “start the revolution,” which fantasizes about the painful medieval deaths of perceived enemies (screenshot here, cached version here):

1.)take out the talking head media, and burn the new york times, the los angeles times and the washington post to the ground. draw and quarter the media, and shoot their remains from canons in the four directions of the prevailing winds.

rinse, lather, repeat as needed.

2.)take out all the incumbent leadership of both parties in the congress, and every self avowed socialist and communist in congress. give them all proper muslim burials at sea, just like osama bin laden.

eliminate pensions for congressional service. rinse, lather, repeat as needed.

3.)eliminate the faculty senates at harvard, yale, columbia, nyu and university of california at santa barbara. boil bill ayers, bernie dorhn and angela davis in canola oil, and feed their remains to the fishes.

they are all physical cowards. they should fall into line pretty quickly. repeat every ten years as a prophylactic, on general principle.

and,

4.)now that the “arab spring” has brought enlightenment to the middle east, send all of the muslim immigrants back to their native countries, in boxes or tourist, their choice.

burn all the mosques. period.

In a post script, he adds that he wants to “burn the editors and contributors” to the Daily Kos, throw “the living governors of new york, california, ohio, illinois, washington, florida and massachusetts into the fiery pits… from which there is no escape,” and writes, “i’ll think of something suitable for hilary clinton.”

In an update to the post, Jay responds to LGF’s Johnson “breathlessly announcing that i am advocating mass murder.” Jay makes no denial of advocating mass murder, and writes of Johnson’s charge, “even the blind hog finds an occasional acorn.”

According to the organization’s website, Geller is the executive director of American Freedom Defense Initiative, which seems to be an umbrella organization for SIOA and other anti-Muslim groups. In a post on the American Thinker from the August of last year, Geller refers to, “my associate, the attorney John Jay.”

When Jay got in trouble last summer for a separate blog post advocating the mass murder of Muslims and liberals, Robert Spencer wrote of “John Jay, a member of the SIOA Board.” Still, Spencer wrote that Jay is “not a founder or co-founder of SIOA. He has no role in the running of the organization.”

As ThinkProgress reported, Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was influenced by American anti-Muslim activists. He cited Spencer and his blog 162 times, and Pam Geller and her blog 12 times. The two play are key players in a network of Islamophbia, explored our recent report, Fear Inc.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta sharply criticized members of Congress who put holds on funds slated for development projects in the West Bank and Gaza and security assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Panetta added his voice to the list of politicians and policy experts expressing frustration with congressional efforts to penalize the PA. Speaking at a Tel Aviv press conference, he emphasized that the White House opposes withholding the funds.

This is a critical time. This is no time to withhold those funds, at a point in time where we are urging the Palestinians and Israelis to sit down and negotiate a peace agreement.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) breaks down the blocked funding and concludes that while $200 million in 2011 funding has already been spent, the blockage will hold up $192 million in funds for humanitarian programs for Palestinian residents in the West Bank and Gaza. These programs include USAID projects and other development assistance programs which have long been kept completely separate from aid to the PA. In addition to the humanitarian aid, $150 million in funding for security assistance to the PA will be withheld.

CAP’s Peter Juul reported last week that Israeli and American officials expressed “deep concern” about defunding the PA:

Both Israelis and Americans stated that a cut off of U.S. aid or Israeli tax transfers could lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority itself. For their part, Israelis viewed an aid cutoff as a threat to Israeli security given the near-certain likelihood that such a move would lead to the breakdown of security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security forces. 

The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Anthony H. Cordesman warned that cutting military aid to the PA could badly damage Palestinian and Israeli security interests. And even neoconservative pro-Israel hawks have voiced opposition to holding up the funding. Responding to the aid blockage, former Bush administration Middle East adviser Elliot Abrams told a Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Hudson Institute conference yesterday that cutting off aid to the PA could result in a collapse of the government in the West Bank.

The blockage in aid has already resulted in the elimination of 50 jobs, according to Palestinian economics minister Hassan Abu Libdeh. The PA has twice failed to pay employees on time in recent months, raising tensions in the West Bank as spending on public works and civil servant salaries become increasingly unpredictable. Concerns about the cutoff in funding go beyond the West Bank and Gaza as American and Israeli officials are growing increasingly vocal with their warnings that a cutoff of assistance could lead to a breakdown in security cooperation with the PA and undermine attempts to build up the West Bank economy.

When news broke two weeks ago that the U.S. had sent bunker buster bombs to Israel in 2009 or 2010, many worried that shipping the bombs — which can penetrate deep into underground bunkers like those that protect the Iranian nuclear program — might be perceived by Israel or Iran as a U.S. “green light” for an Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic. Retired General James Cartwright said that the military had worried about “how the Iranians would perceive it,” and “how the Israelis might perceive it.” And according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, U.S. and Israeli military and diplomatic officials meeting in Israel in late 2009 agreed that “the transfer should be handled quietly to avoid any allegations that the [U.S. government] is helping Israel prepare for a strike against Iran.”

But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta threw cold water on the idea of an Israeli military strike on Iran during a trip to Israel yesterday. At a joint press conference with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Panetta signaled that the U.S. didn’t want to see a surprise strike by Israel: “I think the most effective way to deal with Iran is not on a unilateral basis,” he said in response to a question. Panetta went on to say that, like Israel, the U.S. sees the Iranian nuclear program as a priority, but that countries should work “together” to address it:

We are very concerned [about Iran] and the best approach for dealing with this threat is for all of us to make it clear to them that they cannot proceed on the path that they are on. We will work together to do whatever is necessary to make sure that they do not represent a threat to this region and it depends on countries working together.

The defense correspondent of the Israeli paper Haaretz wrote that Panetta “repeated the word ‘together’ several times in this context.” And the Jerusalem Post added that:

The combination of Panetta’s warning that Israel is “growingly isolated” and his calls for Israel to “work together” were understood within the government as carrying an underlying message that since Israel can only really rely on the US, it will not be able to surprise it with unilateral military action against Iran.

Panetta’s thinly-veiled message came on the same day that the former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency Meir Dagan — echoing comments from May that attacking Iran was “the stupidest thing [he's] ever heard” — said that Iran was not close to having a nuclear bomb and a military attack was “far from being Israel’s preferred option.”