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 don't understand why the letter writers and signatories think that the mummies can solve what the diplomats and governments can't.

I wish we could 😭

It’s about adding voices increasing pressure on politicians surely

Well that's daft. .
It's made them look like they have no understanding of how the world works. Which rather undermines their campaign..
They have the profile and the means to lobby government directly

More voices never hurt a campaign

Everyone’s been telling Israel off for quite a long time. Have Israel taken any notice? That’s a big fat no.

But now, Mumsnet are refusing to be that one voice that Netanyahu will listen to. How remiss of them. They won’t get the Nobel Peace Prize this way, will they?

Do you think they have plenty of shops down the road selling contraceptive in a war zone? In a place were women are still expected to have sex under whatever circumstances and let's face it there probably isn't a coffee shop you can just turn up too and if you can not without permission from your husband?

I'm not sure it warrants a letter from famous people, however I believe that the women involved will encounter bigger setbacks than are currently facing. Women are always the ones who look after the children, wash clothes, fetch water, cook and clean for the whole family in refugee camps. I don't believe blocking humanitarian aid will achieve anything other than more suffering.

This. I am very very gender critical but I’m revolted that this issue could be used to hold agencies delivering life or death aid to ransom.

I have no hesitation in calling shame on any gender critical woman who isn’t.

"Vermin", is it? 🤔

I think we know what you're saying here.

“The Palestinians should stop breeding” you mean?

The need to help pregnant women who will be at increased risk of dying in childbirth, sustaining childbirth related injuries and losing their babies due to not receiving any or inadequate care is what is at issue here not partisan politics, this situation supersedes politics surely

So they're bullying a woman who runs a website?

Wow

Not sure of their approach but perhaps they were unfamiliar with some of the kinds of sentiment expressed here

Why do you keep saying the celebrities are irrelevant when your title specifically mentions them? It’s the celebrities that have you talking about it.

I agree with others that this letter should be to our political leaders not Justine. It’s preposterous to lay this at the feet of Mumsnet as a business - a business not a political party, government or even charity - and its users. It’s pointless posturing not meaningful action.

Well said

Absolutely ridiculous letter. There are definitely better, more sensible, ways of trying to get aid to those who need it.

Post that you're under 25 and live off benefits, but are pregnant, to see the conditions which most of MN think should exsist before pregnancy happens.

Contraception should be a priority. Unfortunately the pro life stance has cut funding everywhere. Of course women should get the aid. But we need to start to discuss women's rights within communities. The subject of ending child marriage should be the top agenda. We can't just forever throw aid at people, when we set conditions in our own society.

I think they need the aid first before a lecture on the benefits of contraception.

You really do come off as judgemental on this one.

There seems to be a legitimate argument that "luvvies are trying to shame mumsnet" rather than be much more proactive.

There's another view, legitimate also, that celebrities have zero power and want to enlist the muscle of mumsnet.

But there's a nasty undercurrent here that argument 1 is only proposed by "genocide supporters" and "vermin". Whether the latter is an anti-semitic slur i don't know but its largely irrelevant.

What surprises me is that you can't acknowledge the legitimacy of the alternative view. Yes. I get you put the thread up expecting everyone to wholeheartedly agree. They didn't.

That doesnt make them bad people or supporters of bad things. It means that regardless of the righteousness of the intended support, they can see the transparency and laziness of a celebrity endorsed letter urging others to do their promotion for them.

Get over it.

And there I was thinking I'd actually found a thread where the trans issue hadn't been showhorned in. 🤣

Is there a petition? Where do I sign?

"Vermin" is anti-Semitic. You can check back with Hitler about that one.

Sadly we do.

We can’t just throw aid at people? You do know there’s a genocide going on? Some people seem to think that the answer to the Palestinians being put under intolerable conditions is for them to stop having children. Another strand to the genocidal bow. Unbelievable.