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 think it's unlikely any aid agency doing that very publicly would be allowed into Afghanistan by the Taliban just as Afghanistan don't allow female aid workers to work. I think that's horrendously wrong, and an enormous and horrific human rights abuse, to ban the entire female sex from working (and education and medical care and maternity care and speaking and looking out of windows), but it's obviously within the Taliban's power to do that given they're doing that.

So it wouldn't be a very clever thing for any aid agency to very publicly criticize the Taliban via press statements saying how awful the Taliban are etc if they want access to provide aid in Afghanistan. Whether it's right or wrong is immaterial. The Taliban control the country and control access to the country.

There are plenty of other people who can do political activism. There is nothing to stop the individual workers boycotting whoever they want in their personal life.

But if you want to help the people threatened by a bear, poking the bear isn't the clever move. If you're more interested in poking the bear quite publicly than directly helping the people threatened by the bear, then that's your priority but you then can't claim that helping people directly is your only or even main objective. It's clearly not.

So do you support these aid agencies also being banned from Afghanistan though? Even without publicly condemning the Taliban (which I think should be allowed by anyone) you're convinced they're all Hamas supporters so they shouldn't be operating anywhere no?

@whatwouldafeministdo

There is nothing to stop the individual workers boycotting whoever they want in their personal life.
Well not according to Israel's regulations

I already said upthread there was a marked difference in the information provided by MSF in its Afghanistan pages and the Gaza pages. The Gaza pages are markedly more political. The Afghanistan pages are much more neutral. I did actually wonder why part of the reason shocking facts (like 97 female aid staff banned, only 3 remaining and they all have to wear burkas) are less prominent is because they don't want to risk access, so have to be careful about their public statements. Even now their access for female staff is almost entirely gone.

Presumably there would be no benefit to Hamas infiltrating MSF aid staff in Afghanistan? I can't imagine they want to challenge the Taliban and stretch their resources. They seem quite single minded about annihilating the Israeli state and Jews so I can't see the benefit to them of doing this?

But if they do it quietly without fanfare, just choosing one bank over another or one hoover over another how would Israel know? They wouldn't. It's the anti-Israeli public statements that are the issue, obviously.

No one poked the bear. The bear changed the rules without provocation to make things even more difficult and let’s not pretend that the bear won’t continue along its destructive way if it’s continually appeased and unquestioned.

And you are missing it.

Do you think Ukraine should allow Russian-supporting aid agencies to provide support? Or Taiwan allow Chinese aid agencies politically agitating for Taiwan to accept Chinese rule work in Taiwan?

Are you actually saying that you think aid agencies should always remain silent in the face of atrocities? Often aid agencies are the only observers independent of each side in war zones? They are usually allowed in as under International Law warring parties have a duty to allow in aid for the civilian population but they should just keep schtum
Perhaps if Israel concentrated on not committing war crimes they could let these aid agencies in. They wouldn’t have fear of any criticism if they were behaving appropriately and could fulfil their obligations under International Law

Yes, aid agencies seeking to provide aid in war zones must remain absolutely impartial to whoever is committing atrocities around them. Other agencies can protest those attocities. If your interest is in providing aid to those in that area then that is all you can do. Anything else and those agencies become players in the war and will find themselves unable to provide that aid. Not all armies care about or recognise international treaties or courts and strict neutrality in the face of any atrocity in all circumstances is the only way you have a chance of getting in to help. The Red Cross used to recognise that.

This is because the ICRC did nothing to help Jews during the Holocaust and remained silent when it became aware of Hitler's decision to exterminate all Jews. Before, during and after the war, the International Committee of the Red Cross was indifferent to the suffering of the Jewish People.

The organization, whose mission is to contain the barbarity of war and protect and assist its victims, was not touched when the victims were Jews. However, it’s actions were not limited to omission. At times, the ICRC became an accomplice, contributing to Nazi propaganda and sympathizing with the Nazis during and after the war.

In 1996, the International Committee of the Red Cross made copies of its archives from the 2nda World War; 25 microfilmed pages of secret files were handed over to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Historians have analyzed these documents and published some of their conclusions.

In 2015, Peter Maurer, president of the ICRC, speaking in Geneva to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camps, criticized his own organization's record during the 2nda World War. Maurer stated that the ICRC “failed to protect civilians and, most notably, Jews persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime.

” He acknowledged that the group “failed as a humanitarian organization because it lost its moral compass.”

I don’t think humanitarian organisations should stay silent
silence is complicity

My cousin worked for a medical aid agency in a dangerous region. It was drummed into them before they left that they must only provide medical care, any political comments would put everyone in the organisation AND anyone seeking help or they had previously helped at risk of almost certain death. There were other organisations agitating politically but the role of their organisation was just to support the vulnerable. Sadly a year after he left, the local warlords deemed the organisation was political and the few left in the region (most had been evacuated) were murdered along with any considered associated with them. That is the reality of getting care into many areas - warlords will only allow it if they see fit and it would be a violent ‘no’ if they believed you would criticise them. There is now no medical care there and hasn’t been for over a decade. And a lot more atrocities.

Are you comparing Israel to warlords?
to quote:

”warlords will only allow it if they see fit and it would be a violent ‘no’ if they believed you would criticise them. There is now no medical care there and hasn’t been for over a decade. And a lot more atrocities.”

a letter urging popular online platform Mumsnet to join them in demanding urgent government action ensuring maternity care is accessible in Gaza

This is a really strange way to go about things.

If they addressed their letter to the government and asked Justine Roberts to sign as a high profile individual that would be fair enough.

But they seem to be asking for a Mumsnet campaign and they'd have done better to start with a guest post or do a webchat and engage with the posters here. They may have got enough support that MNHQ felt a campaign was worthwhile although I suspect they would feel it was just too politically contentious. For similar reasons I don't think they'd run a Mumsnet campaign to stop the puberty blocker trial even though that would have a lot of support.

As it is, I find it profoundly irritating and insulting that they have gone over the heads of all the silly little mummies and assumed that JR can just decide unilaterally what we will all support. They probably think we just discuss pushchairs and what to cook for tea. It's a common mistake and shows a certain level of contempt for mothers.

From the letter: Mumsnet is a powerhouse, and your advocacy for the protection of women and children carries real political weight. With every Prime Minister since David Cameron fielding your questions, it’s clear that when you speak, policymakers listen.

The politicians field questions from posters, not from JR but the letter is addressed to her, not us. Mumsnet has political clout because of all of us. Because there are a fuckton of us and we are voters, a recogniseable demographic - mostly mothers, mostly middle class, mostly well educated. We're extremely influential on the next generation and mostly the main decision makers on household purchases. And we maybe say more of what we think on a site which is not male dominated and where a wide range of dissenting opinions is tolerated. So wise politicians and campaigners will want to get all of us on board, not (just) Justine Roberts.

It’s very clear what they are saying, which isn’t that.

It’s that if you have chosen to work in a highly sensitive area as an aid worker, you should use your common sense to put personal views aside and not show them at work.

Even workers in the NHS have been told by Wes Streeting to appear impartial in the workplace over support for Palestinians or Israelis for the comfort of all patients. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp that while operating in such a sensitive place at Gaza, aid workers should appear to be neutral to be allowed to keep operating.

If there has been no incidents of aid workers showing anti Israel sentiment then maybe Israel would never have felt the need to set these new requirements. But they did, so now these aid organisations have to comply or leave Gaza. Up to them.

So do you feel the IRC were correct in how they behaved during WWIi, do you disagree with their head when he said that by keeping silent they had failed in their duty as a humanitarian agency and had lost their moral compass? Do you think humanitarian organistions should always stay silent or only with regards to Israel?

The ICRC clearly had lost their moral compass because they acted as accomplices to the Nazis and contributed to Nazi propaganda. They should have kept out of the war and just focused on providing humanitarian aid if that is what they were there to do. Much like the aid organisations going into Gaza.

I do think humanitarian aid organisations should always keep out of taking sides when they are in war zones. Not just in relation to Israel but other countries too like Ukraine. Their neutrality makes them powerful as they can be accepted anywhere. Organisations like MSF should be experienced enough to know this.

@Clementi @Twiglets1

Making INGO registration conditional on political and ideological alignment does not indicate neutrality or impartiality - quite the opposite.

Besides obvious safeguarding concerns re sharing sensitive data of members and their families with a regime that has murdered over 500 humanitarian workers already, I think that most people would feel conflicted about aligning themselves with a regime that is going to be tried for genocide. They could be deemed complicit just as the IRC were as outlined by the OP.

You misunderstand- deliberately or otherwise.

It’s not the countries that aid agencies are working with that have to be neutral. Humanitarian aid organisations work in conflicts & wars so that would never happen.

It’s the aid agencies themselves. They don’t have to align with Israel or Hamas. The whole point is they appear neutral & don’t obviously take a side in the war.

If that is too difficult for individuals then they are probably in the wrong job because their actual paid job is just to deliver aid.

Other aid agencies get it. Their staff do and say nothing to spoil their neutrality & give the details of staff names, passports details etc so they can continue working in Gaza.

But none of you who keeps waffling on about neutrality are acknowledging that the Israeli regulations are not in any way politically neutral. They're basically blackmailing aid agencies and aid workers just sign you to a particular political opinion in order to be able to help people. They're not allowed to support boycotts, which is a peaceful protest and yet a democratic state thinks those who support peaceful boyscouts are a danger? They can't support the prosecution of Israeli security forces in international courts - why? Basically if we let you in and you witness (which aid workers have) our security forces sniping children you're not allowed to support them being prosecuted as per international law. What mental gymnastics are you doing to perceived that as neutral in your mind?

The Israeli regulations don’t have to be politically neutral. I acknowledge that they are not but it’s irrelevant in this context because they have the power to stop the NGOs they distrust working in Gaza.

Would you expect any other country at war to be politically neutral? It’s a nonsense.

It’s this abuse of power that is at the heart of the issue. International law is relevant.

I’m behind any campaign to get the aid through.

I fail to understand why Israel - an elected government - should be neutral in face of a neighbouring elected terrorist organisation who literally wants them and all their citizens wiped off the map? They wouldn't be doing their job towards their voters if they were neutral. It would be a huge security failure.

They would be INSANE to be neutral about that.

But it's the aid agencies who aren't campaigning (at least not politically) who are getting the aid through.

Who are getting on with the job, complying with Israel's demands and showing they're politically neutral That's rather the point.

A poster on another thread has posted a link to uk-med who apparently have complied with Israel's demands and are delivering frontline medical care including running field hospitals.

I don't have time to check on uk-med's activites today, but anyone else is free to.

The point is that they are making INGO registration contingent on political and ideological alignment which undermines the neutrality of humanitarian aid.