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

I said this earlier so forgive me repeating.
It's OK for a business/ organisation/ charity to focus on one area and do one thing that well.
Mumsnet builds campaigns out of users views on UK parenting issues which it presents/lobbies to UK politicians. Why should it dilute that focus by trying to influence other countries policies?

Because the situation in Gaza for pregnant women is both dire urgent and possible to alleviate if aid agencies well known and respected ones can just be allowed to continue providing support

So any pressure that can be applied to uk politicians to pressure Israel could help it may not but the alternative is to do nothing

As had been pointed out before, it's also dire in Sudan, Yemen and many other countries.
Why should Mumsnet lose its UK focus to campaign for Gaza specifically?

Please feel free to set up campaigns for these areas too or write to celebrities suggesting they be inckuded

The alternative is not to do nothing for us as individuals.
Why must the perceived might of Mumsnet pull homogeneously behind this particular campaign?
And I really don't think Justine/ Mumsnet have the political power you think it does. Politicians court voters at elections in many different ways.

well that is your view, I think the more voices the better

https://palestinecampaign.org/campaigns/dont-buy-apartheid/

There's a separate massive list of "naughty companies" who supply the Israeli military, but unless you procure IT products for your business, you are unlikely to come across them.

Yes, that's a big issue with the letter.

MNHQ has not been asked by users or text-mined sufficient evidence that users now want to change from campaigning on UK issues to healthcare in conflict zones.
Justine only ever represents what users have said, and she's not in charge of telling us what to think.

Have a look at the vote % before you make too many assumptions just based on who is posting.

In the case of the Soviet bloc, the single biggest cause of regime failure is that a command economy is unsustainable. Contributing factors to German reunification include Hungary demolishing the border fence between it and Austria, allowing East Germans to flee to the West via Hungary and Austria. Yes, the people rebelled, but the conditions had to be right, and prior to the conditions being right they'd have been shot or sent to the gulag instead of succeeding.

What killed the entire Communist bloc in the end was Boris Yeltsin visiting the US and walking into a grocery store. He saw the range of goods, including fresh fruit and veg, on display and realised that communism, or at least the Russian implementation of it, was starving his people.

My dislike of people attempting to publicly shame others into agreeing with them is immense.

It’s interesting that OPs poll shows a pretty equal split in opinions so far, despite the way the question was loaded to guide people to vote in agreement with @GiantBranch

If Justine is reading this thread, her impression will surely be that the MN community is divided on the issue on whether we want to help Judi Dench & Joanna Lumley.

So why didn't these celebrities write their letter to the prime minister or foreign secretary? That would have been infinitely more powerful than the weird decision to address the letter to someone with no influence over foreign politics

If that's the argument then why not address the letter to all major pollster companies?

The decision was bizarre in the extreme. In fact I think it's probably unprecedented to do an open letter like that and not address it to the person primarily responsible for that issue whether that's the pm or the appropriate government minister

And the " because Justine is a mother argument " doesn't wash because check out our foreign Secretary. . .. woman and mother of three

(I mean I think that's a desperately flawed logic for deciding who is responsible for change but if celebrities are going to run it they should at least run it with their brains engaged)

Because they are trying to gather voices to make the call on Starmer more effective

Then why target one lady rather than lots of different people?

And given they are all celebrated "voices" in their own right I'm not sure why they feel the need to ask someone else to campaign for them?

Like I say I think it's almost unheard of to use an open letter in this way. The normal convention is to address them to the person who can actually influence the situation. I think it was indefensible behavior and it's made them look really really stupid

Well if that’s what you think act accordingly I think the campaign issue of pregnant women in already dire circumstances being left without any pregnancy care therefore exposing them and the babies they are carrying to preventable harm is ultimately more important

Then why did you make your thread title all about the celebrities and their - to put it politely - ill advised letter?

There is not a binary choice between this stupid, stupid, coercive letter and 'doing nothing'. I already gave an example - donate to a charity - possible most useful to donate to one of the ones who've been happy to hand over staff lists to Israel to show they're not colluding with terrorists (rather than focusing solely on providing aid) and therefore have access.

I am sure there are very many people who don't agree with this letter who may write to their own MP or indeed the foreign secretary about this.

The foreign secretary is in a position to know more about the true situation on the ground from credible sources rather than celebrity gossip or click bait headlines, too. To some extent as people who can't actually go to Gaza and find out the truth ourselves, we do need to rely on our politicians to do their jobs here.

There is a vast amount of misinformation, which displays a total lack of concern for actual human beings. For example, I googled to try and find out which organisations have complied with Israeli demands as obviously they'd be the best ones to donate to if you actually want to help right now, but google could not help because there is just pages and pages of 'Israel is evil' and a lesser amount of 'these organisations had Hamas terrorists in their staff' with neither side doing much in the way of verifiable facts. The MSM seems more interested in click bait headlines rather than actually doing what it would take to help civilians. And this letter actually seems to me to be part of this pattern.

I have limited time I'm going to spend on this given the number of very clear bad actors (pun intended) when it comes to this conflict, but I will say the Red Cross website on this impressed me as far more neutrally worded and focused on aid than MSF.

Really wish I hadn’t but probably for the same reason charities regularly use celebrities Why is that the only thing you can focus on?

I think the OP has decided that the 'ends justify the means' in this instance and nothing will change her mind. She's trying to shame Justine/us to support her stance, but then her replies become rude, sneary, brittle and petulant at pp raising valid points.
I don't think she's achieved what she set out to do and I doubt she's won any hearts and minds with this thread.

Because that was the topic of the thread. People are more than welcome to start new threads and other topics but I don't see why we should be told we aren't allowed to discuss the original thread topic on here.

And to be frank also because I am genuinely astonished that an open letter has been used in this way. The normal etiquette is to address them to somebody who is actually able to effect change.

She hardly has the monopoly on rude and sneery having read a lot of the replies on this post tbf.