Front Burner - What UNICEF saw in Gaza

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Today on the show, James Elder is here. James is UNICEF’s global spokesperson, and he has made five trips to Gaza since the October attacks documenting what UNICEF has called a “war on children.��  He joins us less than two weeks after a UN backed body officially designated the hunger crisis in Gaza a famine, one that the UN’s relief chief Tom Fletcher says is man-made, and the result of what he calls “systematic obstruction by Israel”. Elder has also reported from Darfur, Yemen, Afghanistan and more. But he says Gaza is unlike anything he’s seen. We’re going to talk about his experiences on the ground and the responsibility of a witness in a time of war.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Hi, everyone, it's Jamie. Today on the show, James Elder is here. James is UNICEF's global spokesperson, and he's made five trips to Gaza since the October 7th, 2023 attacks, documenting what UNICEF has called a war on children. He joins me less than two weeks after a UN-backed body officially designated the hunger crisis in Gaza a famine, one the UN's relief chief Tom Fletcher says is man-made and the result of what he calls, quote, systematic obstruction by Israel. Throughout this war, Israel has barred

international reporters from entering Gaza, leaving Palestinian journalists, many of whom have been killed, to document the devastation. James is one of the few Western voices to bear witness in Gaza firsthand. And some of the images, videos, and reports he's contributed have been some of the defining pieces of media associated with this conflict. Two-year-old Ali, who spent 14 hours under rubble and hasn't spoken for about two weeks

because of that trauma. Only now in the last couple of days, little Ali speaks to a child psychologist and to learn that his mom has been killed. that in the airstrike, his father was killed, that Ali's sister was killed, that Ali's grandmun was killed, you get, Ali's entire family was killed. We have to ask ourselves, are those with power, those with influence to stop this, really going to watch in silence again? Elder has reported from Darfur, Yemen, Afghanistan, and more. But he says Gaza is unlike

anything that he's seen. We're going to talk about his experiences on the ground and the responsibility of a witness at a time of war. Hi, James. Thank you so much for making the time. Jamie, pleasure. Nice to connect. It's really good to have you here. So, as I mentioned, you have been to Gaza five times since October 7th.

At a time, international journalists and experts have been denied access. You've actually managed to find a way behind those barriers. When you think back, how would you just... describe, and how would you characterize that first post October 7th trip to the Gaza Strip? When was it? And what was ultimately there waiting for you when you arrived? Well, it was late November, so about six weeks after the horrors of October 7. What was waiting was a nightly horrific bombardment. You start to learn when very large bombs, you start to, I have no military sense. Suddenly, you started to get an idea of something is 500, 700,

yards away. And then, of course, my time was very quickly spent in hospitals. And I think it was really only, Jamie, the first or second day that I realized this was unlike anything I'd seen in two decades of working for UNICEF and with UNICEF around the world. And that was particularly both because the hospital was a war zone. I kept thinking this feels like a war zone. But in fact, what I was saying was it was. I was seeing children on the floor who needed urgent medical attention, children with trauma wounds. I mean, what shrapnel does to a child's body is, horrific and they were on the floor simply because there was no space. This was hundreds of people running in every direction and thousands of civilians

cowering there because they were seeking care, safety, which what they believed they could get, we now know that's not the case in hospitals that have come under regular attack. So for me, then it was walking outside to be told there was a small bus, a minivan of wounded children coming down and I walked in and just to see these eight petrified little faces. Some of those children wouldn't have made it. All of them had burns. They had shrapnel. The smell, Jamie, of the burning flesh from those children because that bus had taken three days to get was probably an hour long journey based on restrictions of movement and blockades by Israel in the early days there. And that, I think seeing that, smelling that gave me a sense that there was something

terribly wrong about what was starting to occur in Gaza. I believe the last time that you were there was in June. And you described, just described a horrific scene weeks after the October 7th attacks. What have you seen change since then? What was different about this most recent trip compared to the first one? In June, a few months ago, I almost felt that there'd be a similarity in a way, at least to my previous, previous trip, the one before that, which was late 2024, simply because, you know, you think you've seen the worst and then the next blow lands. And there's pushback from the international community and people would say, is it worse now than it was? And unless you're there in a ceasefire, and I hadn't been there then, unless you're there

to ceasefire, then it's always worse because people's coping capacity has been smashed because there's been such consistent and deliberate restrictions on all the things people need to survive, not just food, but obviously food, but water, but medicines. And so I thought I would just see a continued deterioration into the ability of, you know, mum's children, families to survive. It was worse than that, Jamie. I saw for the first time a real deprivation of water. There's been so much discussion, and we may have it around the denials of food, and it's been very, very clear that that's why we got to a famine. But irrespective of all the statements made and the false statements made around aid diversion,

so on water, I mean, I just couldn't not possibly understand what reason there could be to deprive of a population of the amount of water it needed. And so I saw that. And I think the other thing I noticed, Jamie, was going into hospitals, which is what I do and there are scores of children with the wounds of war. This time in June, I wasn't just seeing them. I was hearing them. You know, I'd go in and there'd be three or four children and they would not have had, they would not have had painkillers for hours, if not more than a day, since horrific wounds because those things were denied entry. So not just seeing those little girls and boys, but hearing them. I think there are a couple of things that really struck me on that last mission.

I mentioned that you've been in Yemen, Afghanistan, Darfur. I just wonder if you could spend a bit of time comparing this to those and other conflicts that you've seen with your own eyes. Yeah, it's a really interesting one. I mean, I firmly believe, I mean, UNICEF's mandate is very clear on child rights and the basics. Our mandate is beautifully broad, so we have a sense of doing nutrition and trauma and education and water and sanitation. And I firmly believe an unwritten part of our mandate that UNICEF colleagues, whole dear is that a child is a child wherever they are. So, you know, Sudan right now is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. And I have amazing colleagues in Sudan. But, you know,

we, we have got five million children displaced. You've got moms, you know, who were young children 20 years ago now in chat, who endured the horrors of Darfur and now, you know, now are enduring it all over again. So it's a very, very difficult one to compare. Same in Yemen, same in Ethiopia. I've seen little girls and boys with horrible wounds from mind blast in Ukraine as that continues. I'd never seen in Gaza the sheer scale. I've never been in a hospital where every two, in a single room, there are four or five children with horrific wounds and they've all been there for two days and I walk into a corridor and they will be many more. I cannot overstate how the capacity has been reduced of hospitals in the last seven weeks.

We cannot see more children with the wounds of war. with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their body with the broken bones, in action by those with influence is allowing the killing of children. This is a war on children. And there'll be nutrition crises in a way that a man-made famine where it's not about airdrops, but all the food people need is simply miles away in aid corridors.

So I've never seen that level of deprivation and certainly the scale of destruction. Jamie just you run out of words which we promise ourselves we won't do that would make it pointless but it's apocalyptic i've seen entire cities in gaza that were cities you know three four story buildings as far as the eye can see um you know people with with rooftops that look out to the sea and then months later absolutely devastated rubble in every single direction i have never ever seen that physical destruction to the level of gaza and i've certainly never seen the physical devastation to children's bodies on a scale that I've seen in Gaza.

I mean, UNICEF backs that up. We don't, you know, we called, as you said earlier, UNICEF called it in Gaza a war on children quite early on, and we did not do that, you know, for a headline. We only do these things based on evidence, and that was simply based on the number of children killed and the children as a percentage of overall fatalities. So, you know, this is not a tragedy we couldn't stop. It's one that the world has been excusing and, I think, slowly learning to live with. One child every hour, I think, according to your organization, which is just horrific statistic.

We talked about the famine designation, the designation that came from the UN-backed scientific body. Of course, Gaza has been on the brink of the... famine for a long time and just could you talk to me more about hunger man-made hunger in the context of children namely what does hunger do to a young child yeah it's horrible it really is you go from if you watch the process of a child being severely malnourished it goes from those those screams because you know starvation is the slow collapse of an immune system um in the body almost well quite literally starts eating itself and over time without treatment then those screams turn to silence and silence is followed by death.

So, yes, right now, that worst-case scenario that was warned about ad nauseum, let's be very, very clear. This is entirely, as you said, Jamie Mann-made. So that's playing out now in the Gaza Strip. Malnutrition, what it does is it's, it isn't about making a child thin. It's about making them defenseless to the disease. And a malnourished child is then 10 times more likely to die from, you know, a simple thing of diarrhea or pneumonia or measles than a healthy child.

And of course, you know, in Gaza with sanitation, health systems being devastated, then that's a perfect storm. You know, there are areas now, very large areas in the Gaza Strip where it's around one latrine for every 2,000 women and girls. So sanitation is dire. So malnutrition strips the bodies of vitamins and proteins, all the things that a little girl or boy needs to defend against disease. So malnutrition is happening. Starvation is happening. And again, that is all back on the back of deliberate. deprivation of food being allowed into the Gaza Strip.

Less than 2% of crop land in Gaza is available for cultivation. That's based on that devastation and based on the vast majority of Gaza being under evacuation orders, so people being herded into terrible, terrible areas. I think as we mentioned earlier, what people maybe fail to understand, or those who have been watching and must be so exhausted and shattered by seeing what's been allowed to happen. but, you know, the entire child population of children in Gaza, those under the age of five, which is hundreds of thousands, it's around 300,000, they're at risk of acute malnutrition because, you know, this thing is worsening.

This thing worsens day by day. The situation for those children in Gaza will be worse when you and I stop talking than when we start. James, could you tell me? about some of the children that you've met? Yeah, of course. There's so many. I mean, it sounds strange. Some of the little girls and boys, Jamie, I go back and see,

it's a privilege to see them again and to, you know, take a toy and to see a smile. But I always do reflect upon, and I try to catch up and see how children are doing. So if I think of two, I think, speak to so, so many, you know, more than 100 who I've seen. One is a little girl, Yana. or pronounced Jana.

Jana was when I saw her, this was in June, I went into a hospital room. Again, multiple, multiple children with casualties all happened very, very quickly. I'd actually seen a boy who'd been hit by shrapnel from a tank shell while he was trying to get food aid at one of those, the militarized aid sites. In another room, I met this little girl. She was 11, and two days earlier, she'd been in her shelter, which was a school, but her home had been destroyed. So she's in a shelter. Imagine a school and an outdoor playground. About 7 o'clock in the morning, she'd gone to clean her teeth, a missile, hit the shelter,

and she'd been instantly paralyzed. She was paralyzed from the waist down. She hadn't been knocked out. So this little girl was lying on the ground paralyzed from the waist down when she watched her friend die in front of her. Her friend had been hit as well by this blast. Now, this girl explained this to me. Her mom sat there with her as she explained what had happened.

Her mom was desperate for her to get medical evacuation. It's a totally broken part of the system. But somehow the graciousness and generosity of this family to explain her situation, but also the little girl to explain what had happened to her because she was so desperate for her story to be told to get that medical evacuation. Now, Jana was in a room with three other children, with amputees, children have been shot by quadcopters. And I checked in not so long ago on her,

and she never got that medical evacuation. She had died. died of those injuries, which is incredibly common. There are thousands, I mean thousands, more than 2,000 girls and boys who urgently require medical evacuation from Gaza. So somehow miraculously, they've survived that, you know, bombing at 2 o'clock in the morning on their home or apartment or on the shelter or on the tent. But they go to a hospital where despite the most incredible efforts of medical staff who are also living in tents, also waking up every morning trying to find water for their families before going to their war zone hospital all day. And

despite their best efforts, you know, the restrictions on medical equipment and drugs coming in mean that children need medical evacuation. And they are increasingly denied that either by the authorities or because Western governments aren't willing to open their hospital doors and their heart. So, so, Jana is just, it's just one of so so many. I was hoping that you could also share the story of Abbott Al-Raman, who was featured in a video you did earlier this year for people who might not have seen it. He's sitting with you. in Nassar hospital, both hands are kind of wrapped around your arm as you discuss his situation. This is Abdul Rahman, incredibly brave boy, just sitting on his bed. He has insisted he sit up.

He's insisted he sit up to have this, to be in this shot. And as you talk, he kind of struggles to keep his head up, and he rested on your shoulder, and his father also begins to prop his head up. You can see his hands in the frame as well. And can you tell me about Abed, about what happened to him? I know that this is a video that was deeply, deeply moving for a lot of people, for me. He was an extraordinary, extraordinary little boy. And again, just going to a hospital, you only have to walk in and turn left or right and you will find children who have been very, very recently wounded with these horrific

wounds. During the ceasefire, the United Nations jamming had 400 distribution points. So aid was starting to flow. We were starting to see what you must do. If you're doing humanitarian aid, you must, A, go to where people need it. and B, you must start to see improvements in the situation. That was happening. That had now been sidelined, and these militarized sites have been set up,

which will be becoming increasingly dangerous. We couldn't go to them because they were militarized sites, hearing increasingly worrying reports in terms of what was happening of them, in terms of civilians being shot, in terms of shots from drones. And I met this little boy who he had gone to get food. His father had given him money to go and buy bread, quite possibly the family's last money and so he'd walked out on the streets to buy bread and he'd seen a whole range of people heading in this direction heading south to one of these

distribution points are all quite new the information around them was was very light people didn't quite know but he started heading towards them he's thinking was very very simple that I'm not going to just bring back bread to my family as I watch my mum literally starve everyone in a family is watching their family lose kilograms and kilograms I'm going to come back with whatever it is, this box of food from this place. So he went down there. Everyone heard it into these sort of cattle-like pens. Chaos ensued. There was firing from the sky. He ran. Of course, he didn't get any food. And as he was fleeing, there was a fire from a tank shell, and the shrapnel from the tank shell hit him in the stomach. As he was telling,

he told me this story, as you rightly say, he wanted, he was in immense pain. One of those children that had not had painkillers for about nine hours. He was right. He was right. He was right. He was writhing in pain. He wanted to sit up to tell his story, such as just a proud little boy. As he was telling his story, though, his father was in tears because, you know, he's this little guy who has tried to do everything for the family, but Abed is telling his story in a way that he feels guilty because I've put my family in this situation now. He was simply trying to get food for his family. He had tanked shrap. in his abdomen, various parts of his stomach, but he was okay.

I mean, he was another situation where get this little boy medical attention. As you could see from the video, he sat up, he told his story. I saw him a few days labor again. His mother was fraught with Wari as she held her medical evacuation form, hoping against hope that he would get out. And after two weeks, I got word that he died of those injuries. so a little boy who literally simply went to get food for what was his starving family and died died as a result with a father in absolute tears thinking that his boy had his boy had simply

tried to be the man of the family and help the family it's it's really hard to even um there are no words right there are no words We are gathered here today to celebrate life's big milestones. Do you promise to stand together through home purchases, auto upgrades, and surprise dents and dings? We do. To embrace life's big moments for any adorable co-drivers down the road. We do. Then with the caring support of Desjardin insurance, I pronounce you covered for home, auto, and flexible life insurance.

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Charitable gaming, community good. I wanted to ask you about something specifically. I vividly remember this interview with a Canadian doctor that had been working in Gaza for more than a year ago now. And this doctor described that there was evidence to suggest the children were actually being targeted by the Israeli military. She and other physicians have described seeing children. sniper bullets in their brain. In a statement last year, the UN said, quote, we are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces. And I wonder

in your time in Gaza, did you see any evidence of this kind of targeted, this kind of targeting of children. I certainly had more than a handful of usually parents. Sometimes, like that little boy our bed, children would tell their stories, but often parents, because children were either little or were in a coma, explaining how their home had come under attack. And as they fled, a child was shot by a quadcopter, as they fled after a bombardment. I met again in June, a little boy, I met his mum and dad, and his father was explaining that they had an evacuation order. They'd already been evacuated, but they had an evacuation order on where they were an apartment. They were staying with a number of families. It was again two o'clock in the morning,

did not want to leave because every time a family leaves, the level of physical, mental stress on another evacuation is immense, but it was an evacuation order, so they picked up everything to leave. This little boy was walking through evacuating as had him being ordered to carrying his mattress when a quadcopter shot him in the head. He was in a home where I highly doubt. He will have made it. He will still be alive. So those stories, anecdotes, testimonials are not infrequent by any sense. And it's important to remember that no time ever in Gaza, I know I was a journalist. I've done this UNICEF for 20 years. I have a pretty good radar when I'm being told stories. I walk freely in hospitals. There are no government mind as you. I can,

you know, go at any time turning left or right, as I say. No point do I ever. believe that anyone is telling me anything other than the horrific truth that their child endured. Unfortunately, though, yeah, we've, this very strange period of this conflict of almost where there's been a reflex to defer to government statements, regardless of a track record. It's almost a structural flaw in our conflicts reported. You know, it's far back, Jamie, if I think the late 2023, as I say, when UNICEF called this war on children and we called it indiscriminate, we warned if starvation,

We warned starvation would continue, you know, if aid was denied, and now we have a famine, and we repeated and repeated the claims of aid diversion that they have no proof, and we warned a disease, and then we saw polio. I guess what I'm saying is all this isn't to say, they told you so far from it, but it's to say we were saying it and we weren't listened to. And now there are reportedly 18,000, as you say, a child killed every hour since the horrors of October 7, and we've got a famine. So, you know, UNICEF, we're not neutral in facts.

If we see a child starving, we have to say it. You have to say, this child has a right to food. If I see a child's been bombed and burnt, I have to say this child has a right to medical care. So in a way, you know, it's very perilous. It's not our mandate to speculate on intent. But just by telling the truth of what we see, we certainly see at the moment that it is a type of warfare that shows no respect for civilians and a type of warfare that's deprived of them of everything. from safety all the way to dignity.

You know, you alluded there to, like, neutrality. And one thing I was interested or curious to ask you about is, have you received any kind of pushback on any of your reportage? I think, I'm sure at high levels there would have been, I don't, I honestly don't know. The great thing with UNICEF is we have such a strong mandate when it comes to child rights, and it's literally the first line of our UNICEF's mandate to advocate for child rights and everything, nutrition, sanitation, healthcare education fall under that. So immense support in the one place that really counts, which within the organisation, to speak candidly to what is happening to children.

Of course, a large role of mine or any of those amazing colleagues in all the places you mentioned, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine is to speak about what UNICEF needs to happen, what UNICEF needs in terms of resources. and that comes at a time where we have funding cuts and a potential dismantling of a system that's a growing threat to all. But I do think in Gaza, many of us have felt it's beyond talking about UNICEF's work, which is very broad despite restrictions. It's about bearing witness to what's happened.

And so, no, in that sense, I've always felt a very strong support to be as candid, fact-based, evidence-based, and which is all we ever do on data, we're very rich in data. from every mission into the Gaza Strip. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is this acronym coming out of Gaza that we have been hearing repeatedly, W-C-N-S-F, which stands for wounded child, no-surviving family. By March 2024, it was estimated by Dr. that borders that 17,000 children could be categorized as WCNSF. And I wonder what happens to a child with no surviving parents in Gaza today?

How do they survive? No, quite. How does, I mean, we stretch the question almost right now, how is anyone surviving? The number of people I've spoken to, it's very interesting when we talked of, we talked earlier of famine and what that means. I also speak to many mothers, you know, who talk. that they talk about the aches of hunger, they talk about bruises that just appear, they talk about the exhaustion, the headaches, but many will also say, whilst I imagine the worst part of starvation to be severe hunger,

many will also say that it's the humiliation. It's the humiliation of not being able to protect their children. Now, to bring it back to your question, Jamie, there is an amazing community sense. It is under immense stress in terms of the way the bombardment, the forced displacements, the denials of food, the restrictions on all the things everyone needs. But there has been so frequently, one of the first little boys I met, Omar, who I never thought I'd hear that story. It's one of those things that unfortunately does separate Gaza in some ways.

I never thought I'd hear the story of a child losing their entire family. And that was Omar, this little boy, you know, with these piercing, piercing blue eyes, his mom, his dad, his twin brother. And now I've heard that, you know, that is no longer a unique story. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Now, many of them, there are, there are, you know, non-government organizations. There are, you know, brave Palestinian centers that will try and host those children who have literally no one, no one, no aunties, no uncles, no cousins, no grandparents, because that has happened many more times than we can possibly imagine. Those centers are under enormous strain.

Uniself supports those centers, but they're not safe. because nowhere is safe in Gaza. They suffer from the same areas in terms of the lack of nutritional support that they require. So probably the most horrific place for a child to be is to have had their entire family and to be unable to be cared for by community because of simple displacement. What we have now, which again I saw in June, and I think was one of those elements, Jamie, that it was just a reminder that why we can't look away, Why all those incredible people, by that I mean your audiences who must be so fatigued by having this live streamed and seeing such, you know, aggressive impunity, but we can't look away, both because Palestinians can't look away, but because things are actually getting worse.

So I met a little girl, Dana, who was six years old in a hospital bed, and in late 2023, so early stages of this war, late 2023, her home was struck and it killed her mother and her father. sibling and from that she didn't speak for six months and such was her level of trauma but she moved in and she stayed with some aunties so she was living with aunties there and when i saw there her now in hospital she struck me because she had these beautifully painted fingernails and i could see that there was real care there but i was trying to understand why she was back in hospital she was back in hospital because the new home she'd moved into with the extended family that had been bombed in may that was bombed a few months ago so now she had a trauma wound in her head much more severe so she'd lost her immediate family. She spent six months in trauma. Her family, her aunties had managed to

somehow bring her out in their own way, in their own way, because remembering this is a war zone, they're going to hear bombs every night. They're not going to be in school. They're going to have the deprivations of food, only then for that family home to be bombed. So we're going to see children who have somehow survived unspeakable attacks, suffering another unspeakable attack. I wonder if I could ask you on a more kind of personal level, what it feels like to be there. I imagine that you are having to contend with the same kind of bombardments that everyone else is. You're obviously in a privileged position, but humanitarian workers have been killed doing the work that you're doing. Many, many have been killed.

I've seen videos where you are moved to tears. You look exhausted. I just spoke with a woman who spent nine years trying to conceive and now her only child, her son and her husband have just been killed. The look of despair, despair in her eyes. Immediately after I'm talking to a mum who is watching her little boy die in front of her because he's denied medical evacuation. Or I think of a little rehab I met who said, and I'll read it.

They killed my mother. I used to be beautiful. Now I cannot wash. What do you want me to say? What is there to say in the face of such pain? Such pain here in Darza and such impunity everywhere else? Sorry. Yet you're there for this time, this finite time, right?

And ultimately able to leave. And what is it like to be there on the ground in an extended way in many ways? How does it help you understand things beyond the fog of war? And is there any kind of survivor's remorse that your line of work comes with when it's time for you to leave? Certainly, having been there five different times, it's given me absolute clarity. Because as I say, on one hand, UNICEF has this amazing DAF. On the other hand, I spend every single day that I'm there in camps and hospitals speaking to people. So whilst UNICEF is in a news agency, we're a humanitarian human rights agency,

But as we know, in some parts of the world today, international journals are shut out and misinformation floods in. So it's given me great clarity on what's happened. And it's, you know, now, unfortunately, we have this situation where even when a government is accused of systematic breaches of international humanitarian law and past Niles are proven false, that voice is somehow still treated as, you know, indispensable in balancing a story. So it's given me clarity and the ability to have real confidence to speak within UNICE's mandate to the truth of what is happening to children and the unprecedented scope and scale

of what's happening to those children. You're right, yes, there is absolute guilt every time you leave Gaza. Gaza doesn't leave you because it continues. If it was to stop tomorrow and the rebuilding and their trauma counseling could begin, that would help. I'm in touch with many, many families who, again, are incredibly generous and gracious and just really want to hear what else is happening. And yet in the last months, someone else will be killed. Sturting their levels of starvation are much more severe. So, you know, even young people in their 20s are very, very worried for their parents and

grandparents. So there is, of course, guilt and a sense of powerlessness, even though when you're in Gaza, there are dangers everywhere. There is absolutely no doubt. It's a whole new way of operating. Very few places previously, we would have had colleagues. at in vehicles and then continue to try to get those supplies to those most who need it. At the same time when you're in Gaza, you do see the look in a mother's eyes when her child

gets that magical nutritional food from UNICEF. You do sit with a child who's had two months of trauma counseling from an incredible volunteer and you start to see a slight change in that child, even though they go home to a tent that may hear bombardments that night. So there are things in Gaza that give hope. One of them is just the, you know, the education rate of Palestinians and that ability to bounce back is not a, is not a cliche. But no, it's not a safe place. You know, there's guilt, even when you're there, is guilt for me at two o'clock in the morning, putting a pillow over my head to try and drown out the sound of the bombardment because I know I need to try and function the following day. And there are colleagues who have been there,

you know, for the entire time. My Palestinian colleagues have not left. And they come to work every day and try to do their water, sanitation, logistics, health work, knowing that their own children are living in this horror show. So there are such remarkable people that I get to access, whether it's doctors or everyday mums and young people or my own colleagues who, you know, continue to give you incredible drive and hope in a place like that. But at the same time, I go back and I see, Jamie, those same colleagues have noticeably lost weight. Those same colleagues have aged dramatically because of the trauma and of the stress. Those same colleagues will now have a horrific story of their mum and their sister,

having been bombed and killed whilst they were asleep. So there's no simple way to describe it, but it does leave, unfortunately, an indelible mark on everyone there, unfortunately, particularly for the children, that trauma. Right. I was watching the other day footage of this graduation ceremony in Conunis. I don't know if you saw it. It was at an orphanage of a... thousand children.

And it was just so heartbreaking. Many of the children are just weeping during the ceremony because, you know, they have no family during this moment that is supposed to be prideful for children. And you think about that long-term psychological impact. Deems, you just mentioned the effect on so many of your colleagues, but also, you So many of them have died, right? They have been killed. Nearly 200 journalists have been killed, according to the community to protect journalists. And again, these are, in many cases, would appear to be targeted killings. You are quite a high-profile person, ultimately in a confined space. And do you ever fear that this job, this role, this work could lead to your death? I think in those scenarios you have to very quickly be aware that you have levels of UN security

as best they can, some incredible colleagues, but know that the work you are there to do is only going to be kind of hamstrung by that kind of fear. So in my own sense, I, as you said earlier in your question, Jamie, I look out and I see you know, that I'm able to walk in and get some water to drink and shower once a day and then immediately outside of that side of that space there are thousands of people in tents and everything else. So very quickly your eyes, your mind, every emotion, every fiber is diverted to to everyone else there who, as you said, is not going to leave Gaza. So I think in a sort of practical, pragmatic sense, that's where my attention is naturally diverted to.

In the history of wars, there's often a single indelible image or video that can change the course of them or be the moment that history remembers. I'm thinking of the image of Alan Kurdi, the young Syrian Kurdish child who is pictured face down on a Turkish beach after drowning in the Mediterranean Sea

and its impact on perception of the Syrian Civil War, its impact on policy as well, or the image of the Napalm girl and its impact on the U.S. war in Vietnam. I'm thinking of the images of tortured Abu Ghraib during the war in Iraq as well. You have documented many such stories and images in your time in Gaza,

and what is the single image or moment that most stands out to you and that you think that you will still be wrestling with 15 years from now? As you run through those, Jamie, it's so very, very clear that equal images to all that you share there, you could find those in Gaza and they've all been live streamed and they've not changed, they've not changed things at all. That's what's so frightening for where the coming weeks and months live. Look, if I had to drill down to one, because it was so early on, because it

wasn't just an image, because it was the smell of those little girls burning flesh and they'd been on that bus for three days, so that spoke to all sorts of ways this war was being. fought beyond what had happened to them, but the denials of the moving. So the solidifying of the pain they had to endure, that bus of eight, nine, ten children with bomb blasts and shrapnel through it and horrific burns. I didn't know there was such a thing. It's fourth degree burns. That little minivan of those girls and boys that should have taken an hour to get from Sheeper hospital and had taken three days to get to NASA, the sights, the smells, the utterly fearful started look on their face, that at the earliest stages is certainly one that is a common

a common reoccurrence for me as an image to picture. James Elder, I want to thank you very much for this. I want to thank you for all the work that you do and for telling people about what it is that you are seeing on the ground. Oh, thanks so much, Jamie. Thanks for the engagement. Very nice to speak. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.