You may remember from last year the laughable story about the Muslim Brotherhood using puppies as weapons by dousing them in petrol, setting them on fire and then throwing them at the Egyptian army. Both Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller reduced themselves to objects of ridicule by taking that nonsense seriously.

Well, apparently this form of urban warfare has caught on elsewhere. Under the headline “Puppy jihad: New levels of cruelty reached by Muslims in Jerusalem”, Geller reports that Palestinians in the West Bank town of Abu Dis have attacked an Israeli police patrol by throwing four puppies at them, resulting in the death of the animals so callously used as missiles.

Quite what military advantage the perpetrators hoped to gain from their action is unclear, as in this case the puppies weren’t even set alight. But according to the report reproduced by Geller, Palestinians now prefer to throw soft, furry animals rather than rocks at Israeli state forces.

Geller happily repeats this story, which originates on a Facebook page rather than the Israeli press, while quoting the same hadiths that Spencer used to explain the first case of “puppy jihad”. In the present case, Spencer has so far failed to endorse the report. Perhaps he reasons that, having made a laughing stock of himself once, there’s no point doing so a second time.