In wanting Mumsnet to help Judi Dench and Joanna Lumley

[GiantBranch]

Last week, Israel banned 37 international aid organisations from operating in the strip, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF). MSF delivers one in three of Gaza’s babies, and experts warn that immediate action must be taken to prevent a catastrophe.

It has prompted more than 100 leading members of the arts, including Dames Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Joanna Lumley, Sienna Miller, Suranne Jones and singer Paloma Faith, to sign a letter urging popular online platform Mumsnet to join them in demanding urgent government action ensuring maternity care is accessible in Gaza.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-israel-baby-birth-judi-dench-letter-b2896981.html

There are women in dire need of decent maternity care in the UK too and babies dying here (and women being harmed) unnecessarily. Especially among women less well off than the signatories of this letter.

If women chose to focus on something they can more directly influence, they should not be criticised by those massively better off, as well as less well informed (as far as I can tell), for doing so.

The tone of this letter is we care about this highly political luxury cause and are willing to use less well off women to promote our luxury cause but don't actually care much about these women or any problems they face.

10 minutes on the Relationships board would do them all good and perhaps encourage some humility which they seem to be lacking based on this letter.

Again two things can be done at once

I remain open-minded on the issue and think Reap raises an interesting question.

Writing to the foreign secretary or anyone in Government seems a more reasonable and logical course of action.

And yet they have neither advocated for the improvement of maternity services in the UK or done anything significant other than demand that somebody else picks up a cause they have put their signature to, have they?

It's not as taxing as say, both going to work and posting continually on a thread nearly every hour for a whole day complaining that other women won't prioritise your cause.

And yet they have chosen this instead of not in addition to a campaign for better UK maternity care. It's completely their choice to make but why handwave away questions about why they chose Gaza not UK, Afghanistan etc?

Well because the ban on aid organisations is being imposed in Gaza ?

I have not complained it is posters choices what they do, I just consider that the arguments using a why not help our own logic are odd, one does not rule out the other

Bacause bad as uk maternity services are I don’t think the situation quite matches that in Gaza currently

What do you think stopped these signatories from supporting Mumsnet's previous campaigns?

no idea don’t know if they did or didn’t

The stated aim of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. Hamas do not live separately in military bases; they work alongside and embedded within civilian infrastructure with the support of many ordinary Palestinians (and powerful foreign backers). It is not unreasonable for Israel to ask aid groups to co-operate with staff info to reduce the endless, insidious terrorism threat.

The quickest and simplest way for Palestinian women to get vital healthcare is for aid agencies to acknowledge this isn't a "normal" war zone. Western celebrities would be a lot more useful if they realised it's a bit more complicated than the Ladybird Book of Good and Evil.

I work in a university STEM department. The Dept of Medicine is renowned for its finances always being in a mess (like the NHS). I asked a senior prof whose wife was an A&E consultant why this was, and he said people just shout "dead babies! If you don't give us more money there'll be dead babies!" The emotive pull of infant mortality shouldn't stop us applying facts and rules.

You’d think if this were true the NHS would have luxury services unfortunately I think the plight of pregnant women is often far from fully understood or properly supported indeed oftentimes it is actively overlooked, look at how women were treated during Covid for example, if but dead babies worked women would be in a far better situation all over the world

would you trust your employees' name being shared with the Israeli military? Would you need fear they would be subject to extra "attention"? Would you be happy with your personal information being shared with the IDF if you were one of the employees?

Your thread title is about giving "help" to two actresses. As far as I know, they are not running a campaign, so what particular campaign would you like to focus on? I believe there are several organisations focussing on Gaza.
Or do you mean you consider all these to be the same overall campaign?

There is not much to discuss about the actual situation on the ground. We all know it is truly horrific. What else is there to say?

I would feel safer knowing my colleagues weren't secretly colluding with terrorists. As I said, this isn't a normal warzone with armed gangs/local militia patrolling and setting up blockades and camps being very obviously the Bad Guys.

Yes, I would actually and I'd be keen to prove I'm not a Hamas terrorist and would understand it's a condition of being there (like DBS in schools).

I'd consider it necessary (like DBS in schools) to be able to provide frontline care and focus on the aid.

And Israel haven't done this from the start, they've done it in response to aid agencies being used by Hamas to further terrorism, which definitely doesn't help maternity care in Gaza. So I don't think it's in any way unreasonable. If these aid agencies care about providing aid to the people of Gaza they will demonstrate they are not terrorists. Plenty of organisations have complied and there's been no problems so why won't the others? I read somewhere it's only 37 out of 100 organisations who have refused to comply.

If these organisations wanted to truly help, they'd stop using deliberately provocative words like genocide. They would have a whole lot more support then as they wouldn't be acting actively divisive.

I really think it's time Juliet Stevenson stopped signing every letter that came along; she has delighted us enough. You think the whole Wakefield debacle would have taught her something..

If you think it is an any way like a DBS you are very very deluded.

I didn't say the money was being used effectively and wisely, just that it keeps coming when the "but dead babies!" line is wailed.

Maybe it would help if Netanyahu faced the charges of which he is accused in court rather than trying to suppress the evidence.

If he is as innocent as so many here seem to claim that shouldn't be an issue.

Luckily he is Trumps mate, and Israeli arms sales are profitable to the US, otherwise it would be him in New York Prison like Maduro.

If he is as innocent as so many here seem to claim that shouldn't be an issue.

Can you point me to who on this thread has done this please?

Maybe someone can pen a letter to Justine and get her to just fix up all the wars and injustices in the world once she's finished solving global maternity services? After that I'll put in a letter and see if she is available for tiling my bathroom. Cheers Justine👍🏼

so you think, simply as an employer, an organisation would be meeting it's duty-of-care obligations in providing their employees' information to an organisation that has ... to put it minimally, been found to have carried out egregious human rights violations against the people of the territories it occupies? This has been held even by the US State Department.

So Israel should not try and stop terrorism in any way then? I didn't say it was exactly like a DBS check but demonstrating you're not in bad faith / a criminal is a pretty normal part of adult responsibility and as noted the majority of aid organisations have done this.

I'd already noted that the MSF website was weirdly and uncharacteristically political on this issue alone.

This move might actually be beneficial to mothers in Gaza as I'm sure it doesn't benefit them much if supposed aid workers are in fact terrorists and focused on that not aid work.