As the battles of freedom against totalitarianism rage in the Gaza Strip, the battle of ideas and truth rages online. As activists, we have a duty to stand by Israel, the only democracy in the entire Middle-East (liberated Iraq not quite yet standing on her own two feet), to challenge the lies which Islamists and their Leftist accessories spout, and correct the bias and misreporting in the media.

The most obvious way we can show our support is to wear our politics on our sleeves. Be it a lapel badge on your suit, your Facebook picture (with the ribbon), or by donating your Facebook status to show the number of terrorist rockets to strike Israel. Drive? Show your support on your vehicle – the adjacent ribbon can be purchased online as a magnetic sticker.

So you’re fighting the culture war, you’ve nailed your colours to the mast – now what? You need to be well versed in the facts of this conflict, ready take on and correct the inaccuracies, half-truths and outright lies being peddled.

Take tonight’s news which is dominated by what is being billed as an Israeli strike on a UN school in Gaza. Whilst any loss of life on either side of this conflict is tragic and cannot be trivialised, we have to drill into people that Israel doesn’t make targets out of civilians – Hamas does. Hamas purposefully fights in urban environments to use the civilians as human shields, hoping to make strikes against their positions harder, and to score propaganda value from incidents like tonight’s, for which Hamas was entirely responsible. The school in question was being used to attack Israeli forces from. This is hardly a unique incident. Michelle Malkin has blogged a video from 2007 of terrorists using another UN school to fire mortars into Israel.

For those of you not members of Conservative Friends of Israel, they do weekly briefing notes giving an insight into the constant threat the Israeli people live under, and are, as you might expect, very busy at the moment.

Donal Blaney has a graphic video to illustrate the reality of living under a 15 second warning of missile attack. This is what Israelis in towns like Sderot face every single day.

A popular rod to beat Israel with is the idea that its response is disproportionate, begging the question, what would have been proportionate? Over the last 3 years some 5,800 rockets have been fired by terrorists into Israel. Where as Israel only pursues military, terrorist targets, Hamas et al purposefully fire indiscriminately at civilian areas. On Christmas Day 2008 alone, 80 terrorist rockets pounded Israel. The only ‘proportionate’ response to rocket attacks on Israeli civilians is their cessation.

Finally, for now, Douglas Murray exposes the fallacy of the idea that the weekend’s protests in London are in any way representative of public opinion. Passages such as this are especially damning, and need to be repeated time and again to all those who doubt how deeply the claws of the Islamists penetrate:

“The London embassy of one of Britain’s foremost allies has been under siege thanks largely to the British Muslim Initiative, who detailed on their website the time and location of the demonstration.  The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK- whose spokesman Asghar Bukhari was recently revealed by the Centre for Social Cohesion to believe that “any Muslim who fights against Israel and dies is a martyr and will be granted paradise”- also sought to give greater exposure to the planned demonstration.“

UPDATE: Hamas’ propensity for targeting Israeli schools.