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

But this isn’t a thread about Gaza, it is a thread about people writing a manipulative letter to the head of Mumsnet to try and get her to use the weight of its membership to support a particular cause.

If we are to be used to back up Justine pushing specific causes then we should be entitled to say that if she wants to support maternity services for women then Afghanistan should at the top of the list rather than allow us to be used by Hamas in their mistreatment of women to achieve their political ends.

Can you start up a thread detailing the action you're taking on this issue in Afghanistan and put a link on this thread to it please?

I'm sure a lot of women on this site would get behind the action you're taking.

Presumably the best approach @whatwouldafeministdo can take is to write an open letter placing the responsibility on a random vaguely public figure who has absolutely no influence over the situation?

Yes if they want to do that I, and I am sure others, would be interested to read it. It would likely raise awareness of the issues and potentially generate some groundswell momentum to explore ways to help facilitate change.

Except we don't all think it's manipulative, many of think it's a worthy cause. Those who don't can't just say that and go they seem to also want to completely derail with all the others causes they think should be addressed.

And you really think it is acceptable to target a random individual who has no influence? What an intriguing way to treat others

Seems 85% of organisations are ok with it, I think that can be counted as the vast majority.

And if MSF decides to stop working in Gaza because they prefer to keep snipers on their payroll while they know they are provide most of the care to pregnant women, they are the ones who let women down.

And OP repeating one more time "but the pregnant women of Gaza" sounds more and more like a convenient excuse to hide the fact and a desperate attempt to make us look elsewhere.

And it s pretty despicable to hide behind vulnerable women like that or to turn them into a slogan. Not everyone is Cato the Elder.

And Hamas is still free to give up its weapons and free all the hostages so the peace process can go a step further, which would be the best outcome for women, so, what about asking luvvies to write an open letter to Hamas? Or to MSF?

Wouldn t it be more useful than ganging up against Justine to pressure the PM in the name of the whole Mumsnet community into denouncing something he has already decried publicly with 10 other nations a few days ago?

Disgusting victim blaming. You should have paid much more attention to history lessons in school and then you would know there was lots of resistance to Nazis within (and outside) Germany in the 1930s and the resistance was met with violence, torture and death.

There's a special place in hell for people whose activism primarily consists of social media criticising people who lost their families, homes, countries, livelihoods and lives for not standing up to a violent and well armed regime.

It's possible to think something is a worthy cause and not be manipulative in how we choose to promote said cause.

I happen to support a lot of animal charities but I'm not writing an open letter to Justine asking her to get involved because there are a lot of animal lovers on MN. I believe she has the right to choose her own issues.

Nope. The vast majority of authoritarian regimes fall because those with bigger and better military hardware come along.

A random individual who has no influence has not been targeted; a relevant individual who does have influence has been asked.

Those points have already been covered on this thread.

I think you are misconstruing the posters comment she had said that if German nationals had resisted the Nazis, instead of mainly being either being active participants in the holocaust or passive bystanders, it could not have occurred, basically if there had been more Sophie Scholls the holocaust would not have occurred. She was not referring to the Jewish victims.

She does not have influence on the policy of a foreign country. The appropriate person to have addressed a letter to was the foreign Secretary or the prime minister it's inexcusable to have targeted a private individual in this way

I've edited my response to clarify. My response stands.

Anyway the topic of this thread is preventing future harms and ameliorating a current situation not debating past events

Someone else brought up Nazi Germany so thread police them.

Why don't MSF et al comply with the requirements if they care so much about saving pregnant women?

I thought the topic of this thread was about whether Justine has to somehow do what a bunch of actresses tell her to do? (Even though she actually has no influence at all over the situation)

The campaign is asking Mumsnet to join in calling on the Uk government to use it’s influence to request Israel desist from it’s current intention to block these aid agencies thereby causing further and unnecessary suffering to pregnant Palestinian women

Does Justine have influence over Hamas or Netanyahu?

No - so why should she involve herself in the Gaza war beyond providing a platform for people to discuss the war. Views of which are very mixed in the MN community.

mumsnet is not being asked to negotiate with Hamas or Netanyahu, have you read any of the thread?

She does have influence on UK politics (as evidenced by all the interview she is hard with the recent prime ministers), and UK political leaders have influence on other countries.

What exactly about that short, two-step process is hard to understand?

...All the interviews she has had...

But the government has already done that.
And the letter was addressed very specifically to Justine not to " the people who use Mumsnet"

And if they wanted to speak to the users of mum'snet why an open letter to the press? They could have just started a post on here!

The whole thing is wildly illogical

You're assuming you know Justine's personal opinions on Israel's decision making on this matter, which you do not.

Neither do I and she may well support the campaign on a personal level, I don't know. But the situation with the aid agencies is a lot more nuanced than the way you frame it.

On UK policy perhaps, derived first and foremost from the wishes and voices of the users of the forum not from her telling the users of the forum what to do and think.

It's quite a stretch to extend that to foreign politics..
And like I have said why on earth was the decision to do an open letter to the press address to Justine rather than just posting on Mumsnet and addressing the users directly?

Like I say, at best this was a deeply baffling way to go about things.