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

Accusing posters of responding to phantom/ imaginary posts was rife too. Haven’t seen it for a while. Terribly time wasting getting into pointless spats and all part of the derailment. Bye Twiglet

Extremely pertinent reporting today

”Israel’s war in Gaza has led to a 41% fall in births in the territory, and high numbers of maternal deaths, miscarriages, newborn mortality and premature births, two reports into the impact of the conflict on pregnant women, babies and maternity care reveal.

Two reports by Physicians for Human Rights, in collaboration with the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel document how the war has led to high figures for maternal and neonatal mortality and forced births in dangerous conditions and systematically dismantled health services – consequences of “a deliberate intention of preventing births among Palestinians, meeting the legal criteria of the Genocide Convention,” researchers said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/14/gaza-war-fall-in-births-reproductive-violence

from the report

“The destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure, combined with restrictions on food and medical supplies including baby formula, has created an environment in which the fundamental biological processes of reproduction and survival have been systematically destroyed, resulting in known and foreseeable harm, pain, suffering, and death.”

https://phr.org/our-work/resources/destroying-hope-for-the-future-reproductive-violence-in-gaza/

To support healthcare in Gaza, including maternity care and the only neonatal unit still operating you can donate to
https://internationalmedicalcorps.org.uk/emergency-response/israel-gaza-crisis/
Or https://www.uk-med.org/gaza-crisis-appeal/ also has a maternal and child unit.

Also important to pressure the Israeli government to both allow the specialised maternity units which it has blocked at the border in and to reverse it’s ban on aid agencies that provide critical support to Palestinian women such as MSF which has to date supported 1 in 3 births but which Israel is on course to ban