Excluding a friend?

[StephPlum]

In the last few years my friendship group has settled into a nice little group of 5.
We have a WhatsApp that's busy with chat and support and we often get together with or without families. Husbands all get along too.
Before Xmas friend 1 told friend 2 that she's moving her child to a new school because of bullying that friend 2's child was involved in. Friend 1 insisted she didn't want to fall out, but friend 2 was upset, said it was all liesbso they had words and friend 1 left the WhatsApp.
Friend 1 has kept in touch with everyone except friend 2. When sending invites to stuff friend 1 includes everyone (Inc. Friend 2, who won't join in).
Friend 2 won't join anything that friend 1 is involved in. So we've had a few get together with just friend 2.
Friend 1 found out about this and is really upset. She thinks they should both be included in everything, and that we are actually preventing a reconciliation by enabling friend 2 to just leave her out. She left the WhatsApp group herself but is now feeling excluded.
If we didn't do anything with friend 2 separately she wouldn't see any of us.
Aibu to leave out friend 1 sometimes?

Because being friends with Friend 2 feels more convenient. Which is a frankly terrible reason. As I‘ve already said, Friends 2 to 5 need to break up as they are not encouraging each other to be their best selves.

Other friends are available.

F2 is obviously a bully. It's no wonder her child is too. Two years FFS?! That's pretty systematic and intentional. F1 handled it properly by going through the school, as is often advised here.

Bullies are vile, disgusting creatures. Your continued support and friendship with F2, whilst treating F1 (the victim!) badly shows that you, too, are a bully. Birds of a feather flock together.

I'm flummoxed as to why F1 (still) wants anything to do with any of you.

The fact F1 has friends outside the group, whilst F2 doesn't, speaks volumes in itself. It's probably not the first time F2 has burnt bridges through her bullying, manipulation, and self centred hysterics.

People outside the group - who have the emotional intelligence to see the bigger picture - will be judging you and the other "friends" for the way you're treating F1, and will, quite rightly, draw the same conclusion as most of the posters here.

What a disgusting attitude.
So just because f1 is kinder and more reasonable you treat her like crap and leave her out and pander to f2? f2 sounds like a bully herself, and you sound like her side-kick backing her up. You seem to have Faux concern for f1 because all of your posts have shown you are more sympathetic to f2.
If I were f1 I would drop the lot of you because none of you have backed her or shown her any solidarity.

Honestly this sounds like something my 8 year old would say when she came home from school having had a playground spat!

From reading all your posts, I don’t think you actually have the maturity to actually sort this out.

In this situation I'm always F1, and I'm marvelling at how easily manipulated by bullies you all are as I walk away.

Thanks again to everyone who commented. Lots of food for thought