Open letter: Mothers Appeal To Mumsnet CEO Justine Roberts

It's clear that they know nothing about Mumsnet in general or @JustineMumsnet in particular if they think she'll roll over for this sort of emotional blackmail.

Why do we have to care about this "as mothers"? @AmyAbd (not all Mumsnet users are mothers, why not "as fellow humans"?)
Why only the mothers/ babies in Gaza and not Sudan?

And read up on why Israel asks aid agencies to make certain commitments before working in Gaza and why these organisations are refusing to do so rather than than scolding us for not immediately fawning over a group of privileged entertainers and their attempt to bully a female business owner.

Oh i'm glad to know this shit storm is all Israel's fault, their was me thinking Hamas had a hand in it.

Somebody here has said no organisation is banned from working in Gaza. This is a blatant lie. Israel has just banned 37 aid agencies, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders from working in Gaza. This is on top of decades of attrition - both in Gaza and the West Bank and the long-standing Israeli policy of compromising the work of aid agencies and human rights organisations, including Israeli human rights organisations. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. There is no ceasefire: Israel is still actively bombing and shooting Palestinians on a daily basis. In addition to this, they have dismantled the health care system so catastrophically that disease, malnutrition and lack of sanitation, as well as the bitterly cold winter and rain, is now continuing their genocide. This letter has been put together in order to gather the strength of a 9 million strong community to put pressure on the government to stop selling arms to Israel. Ultimately, sanctions on Israel are required in order to stop its campaign of genocide and extermination. As mothers, surely the least we can do is to show empathy and love for the children and babies and mothers in Gaza. Infant mortality has gone up by 75% in the last 2 years and miscarriages by 300%. Mothers are severely malnourished and struggling to feed themselves and their children, to keep them warm, to protect them with shelter. This is an Israeli made humanitarian catastrophe on a scale that is unprecedented. Let us show our humanity and put our voices to this call to the government to end complicity in the Israeli genocide.

but cant quite make the points I want to make

I posted on the AIBU thread citing the First Rule and describing the letter as coercive control. It took a while for that penny to drop for me. What I wrote there might help with your points?

All of you who described it as bullying and manipulative are on the nail. I struggle with the language surrounding social interactions, so all I could identify was "this feels bad" and take a stab as to a possible underlying motive.

I am reminded of "if you're not with us, you're against us", which is always a threat. I am also reminded of the perennial virtue-signalling student union motions to condemn <thing>, where <thing> is usually the fault of a foreign govt who doesn't even know that Smalltown Former Poly even exists, never mind pays attention to what its SU committee thinks. The SU motions about Palestine/conflict minerals/gay rights in Russia/etc are not only pointless, they distract from the task of representing and supporting the students. I'm lastly reminded of Catch-22's Great Loyalty Oath Crusade.

When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to.

It feels like there's a subtext of "if you don't cosign this, you must want to hurt babies", when that's not the case because there are plenty of other reasons not to cosign it.

Is Oxfam still 'one of the world's most respected charities'? What with all the sex-for-aid scandals and all.

In case you missed it, it's being discussed over in AIBU:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5472605-in-wanting-mumsnet-to-help-judi-dench-and-joanna-lumley?page=1

Maybe it's a ploy to distract from the Mumsnet supports Reform story (it's late so conspiracy time).

Yep. Why are they targeting Justine and mn when they have power to lobby directly?

Ignoring the el-Fattah mess up.

The absolute folly of this letter is becoming clearer as the day goes on. It was so ludicrous, I couldn't believe that those women could pressure another woman like this to do their bidding.

I am still incredulous.

Mumsnet's responsibility for Gaza is clear. Yet are we not forgetting how Mumsnet has also failed to stop war in Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, Venezuela and Somalia in recent times??

Why are British mums asleep on the job? They defeated Hitler and won the Cold war after all. Why not end the conflict in Israel/Palestine? I fear British Mums are spending too much time worrying about babies/kittens/cream teas and cocktails and whether women actually are real and not enough about their responsibility to stop men fighting in the Middle East.

Get back to work wims.

This still reeks of exceptionally privileged women seeking to use Mumsnet for their own ends without ever contributing anything to the site.
While we're all anonymous on here, I'm sure that Juliet Stevenson / Dame Judy / Dame Imelda / Dame Meera are regulars on AIBU. telly addicts, style and beauty, fought the Bounty good fight while sharing their thoughts on FWR occasionally. I expect being such fans of Mumsnet they all rallied round Justine when she was swatted and became premium subscribers like so many of us to support Mumsnet.

All this no doubt explains why they feel so entitled to piggyback off Justine's / Mumsnet's hard work and success in order to compel MNHQ into signing up to their current priority.

And Justine has diplomatically set up a meeting with these powerful members of Mumsnet - bless her.

https://www.youtube.com/live/y92n9xU6rWk?si=lFjYwcf7Hwc_I7vG

This is where the actress Julliet Stephenson explained about the Mumsnet approach. Not sure it takes you straight to it. 1hr 16mins into Sky News breakfast this morning.

Dear signatories / authors of this open letter.

Yes, the situation in Gaza is unspeakably awful.

No, men cannot become women.

Yours sincerely,
An avowedly anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-Islamophobic, climate-defending, solidly left-wing, socialist-to-the-core feminist.

Same. I went on a lot of anti Iraq war demos, my first experience of activism, and noticed some people were trying to use it to crowbar others of their pet issues in.

I agree that the letter is tryng to commandeer the whole of mumsnet towards a personal cause; one that is known to be a lightning rod for all sorts of other contentious issues.

Yeah that is genuinely interesting!

Sorry, *Abu Jamal

Even as a callow uni student I remember thinking that including these other disparate causes - even ones I agreed with, like the climate one - really weakened the main message against the Iraq invasion.

The omnicause has been going for years. I remember going to a protest against the Iraq War in New York in 2003, and finding myself sandwiched between climate protesters and "Free Mumia Al Jamal" posters.

Also, given that it was Joanna Lumley who reduced government ministers like Phil Woolas to apologetic nodding puppets over the plight of Ghurka families, wouldn’t she and the other Dames and luminaries be best placed to seek meetings with the government?

Rarely have I seen anything as fabulous as Joanna Lumley sorting out the Labour government’s position on the Ghurkas.

But as I said, I’m not sure how real this letter is.

Omnicause luvvies normally have been led to belief that Mumsnet is transphobe central though, which is why I thought at first that this was some silly ‘trap’ aimed at Justine.

Then I saw Amanda Abbington’s name on it.

So now I’m thinking hoax or mental.

I see that too. A set collection of causes that are taken on board uncritically by a certain type of person who identifies as left-wing, and are then espoused enthusiastically without much apparent further thought.

There doesn’t appear to be much, if any, critical thinking done about whether each cause should be supported and, if so, in what form. There’s just a sense that if other people on the left are telling you that’s a just cause, then it must be the right thing to support and doing so means you are a nice, virtuous person.

Anyone who doesn’t enthusiastically take the views on board uncritically is ‘right wing’ and therefore a bit of a shit.

I think it must feel very nice to just swallow all this whole without troubling yourself too much about the nuance, and feel smug about how lovely a person you are. Then there are the benefits of being part of the club and fitting in. And avoiding being cancelled. It’s very seductive. But it’s dangerous, because fewer and fewer people (particularly young people) seem to be thinking for themselves or deploying any effective level of critical thinking.