YouSaid · the spoken record

James Elder

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2025-09-07

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2025-09-07

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1. “Leave here, you know, and that was always my response there. Gaza is different. You don't leave Gaza not until this ends, not because of what it's doing to the people, because of what it's doing to international norms, because of the dangers of what impunity there is doing to international systems and things that have given a lot of people a lot of security over the time and simply because, yeah, I know some of those seven-year-old and 17-year-old kids are intense tonight. So no, I said shorthand, but it's not. No, it doesn't leave. But, you know, I got a rock star wife and good kids, so you dive into family and you feel very, very, very lucky.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Who had he been told to he could leave on a certain route with his family. It was untrue when there'd been an explosion. He'd lay under a cake, told me this story. He lay under a car and he watched his mum burn to death. As he told me this, he broke into tears. And I told the counsellor, enough, enough. And she said, no, he's never talked about this, James. He needs to talk about it. So he told me that. He lost his leg. Then I went to a hospital that was underground, a maternity hospital. And it was just the cruelest thing I'd seen because there was all these young mums and they were meant to be celebrating with, you know, husbands and mother-in-law-in-laws and shower teas or whatever you call these things. They were underground and they were in the dirt. And I just walked out of this and it was just been a bad day. And it was winter. And I sat outside and sort of hunched over and had a moment. An old Ukrainian woman came over and I don't know. She thought I was Ukrainian or something. And she said something and tapped me on the shoulder. And my sense while she was sort of saying it's okay. You'll be okay. And I snapped out of it and I thought, get over yourself.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Yeah, it's a good question. I read it, Lindsay. I think it's kind of indulgent to do my own sense, but in a shorthand, yeah, I don't think you can process it all. And it's certainly not something I can box because I've met so many people in Gaza, so many colleagues who are still on the ground, so many families who I'm in touch with almost every day, who just, who, again, their generosity in terms of giving their own time and their pride, they're not asking for anything, if anything, they're just asking for a sense of what's happening around the world. But then you hear the stories and you hear the story like I did the other day of one of the young people I'd met whose mother had now just been killed a few days ago. So no, it doesn't leave. I used to get when I was in Ukraine in the early stages of the war, Alistair, I'd come out and people would say, what about you? How are you? And I would tell a sort of anecdote because it didn't feel very comfortable. And I'd say, look, I remember I was once at a hospital and there was a 14-year-old boy.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “News 24 7. Not as you say young people have an umbrella of a climate crisis and now they're seeing on one hand the world's response to attacks on Ukraine. On the other hand, the world's lack of response to attacks on Palestinians. So they're seeing human rights broken. They're seeing that, I don't know, I think it's becoming corrosive and they're learning that justice is very selective. That worries me deeply about a young population who are very empathetic. And I completely understand why some populations want to turn away. Of course, everyday people, I really do. My goodness, I want to turn away, you know, never will, but I understand that. I don't think that leaders do. I don't think member states should turn away from a millisecond. And I certainly know that the Palestinians, girls, boys, mums, dad, grandmothers, they don't get to turn off.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Yeah, I think I'd break it into almost two parts. So I agree on there's a real problem with empathy. There's people like algorithms, without a doubt, Alice Sarah just feeding people too much information there. So there's a complete empathy fatigue. And we know that people are more likely to care if they see a single child than if they see multiple and they're seeing crises everywhere. But I also, I talk to young people. I try to make a habit of hearing from other generations, checking my own confirmation bias and listening. And I hear a lot of young people who care greatly about what's happening now. And actually, to me, it's...”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Maybe something, but there is something there for which means no matter what's happened, they've driven and got these education rates that are the envy of the region. There's something that has this ability to bounce back. So donors will have to step up massively in ways we've never seen. But Palestinians on the ground have that ability to recover. But it's not limitless. We've seen that attack on healthcare. We've seen that attack on doctors. We saw so many professors killed in those first months. so many teachers so we're not i'm not i'm not being blithe to the to the enormity of the challenges i'm just saying that there is something very special about that ability to recover but but yes as you say right now it's a prayer for a ceasefire because all talk is that this gets worse for that population”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Of homes that have been damaged or destroyed. So it is a huge, huge, almost unfathomable amount. And as I say, to speak to what Alice has said before, but I found some hope because, I don't know, I saw some of those structures. I understand those education rates. I understand that Palestinians, how they have that ability to recover. Really simple things to Alistair. I got a young colleague. She's a men. She's 25 years old. When I walk through those hospitals, when I walk across children with limbs removed and mothers in tears, she's doing the same thing, this young woman, and she's still there living with her family, even though the family home's been blown up. And she was talking to me about the ceasefire saying, James, I wish you saw it. I wish you saw how we bounce back and responded. She said, you know, we love life. Now, I say that because Palestinians feel, and I think they've maybe they felt fragility.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “The very best of healthcare that I've seen, but that has been utterly, utterly decimated. Because, of course, we're always talking when we talk about children with the wounds of war who can't get out of Gaza. Medical supplies can't get in, children can't get out. We're forgetting 50-year-olds with cancer. We're forgetting children with leukemia, all those things. That needs a very fast rebuild. So immense amount of rebuild to a health system. Nutrition will be first and foremost. We are at a point now whereby because we've had so many deprivations of food coming into the Gaza Strip, you start to see cognitive decline can last a lifetime. So we have to have to address nutrition and healthcare as the most immediate priorities. Then the colleagues will talk to you about unexploded ordnances, all those things are rebuilding setup that I can't speak to, I don't have the expertise when we look at the sheer devastation of homes, 67.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I think one of the things that struck me when I was last there, because I'd been through Gaza City a lot, getting aid supplies there, but I never stayed there. And when I was in Gaza City, something that gave me hope, Aurory in terms of that rebuild was standing on the very top of a building and looking to seeing how much was still there. I mean, I've seen Khan Eunice going from being a city to being rubble. I've seen the same of Rafa. So seeing one hand how much physical structure was there, hearing those stories about during the ceasefire and about people having cake and cappuccino and how UNICEF suddenly went from having nothing to 100,000 children into classrooms. That's on the back of Palestinians. You can't recreate an education rate like a 98% literacy. So that gives me immense hope. So the first things you would be doing are the health system. There's a health system that has been systematically devastated. And again, we're talking some hospitals that, you know, I'd say world class, I don't want to divide the world into sections, but, you know, genuinely.”

   2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, when humanitarian aid, that's not how humanitarian aid is delivered, you know, when WHO, WFP, UNICEF, all braid partners on the ground delivering aid, people are not being killed when we're vaccinating or giving nutritional supplies to mums and malnourished babies. That doesn't happen”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “We're starving. The physical change I see in families is immense. And you'd have a young guy going, I'm done. I've got to help my family. I cannot see my parents look like this. And they'd have a discussion. They say, no, you're not. And these young people would go down. I remember speaking to one young guy and he said to me, James, we went, we were in the cage. We were in the area. We did everything we were told. We waited for four hours. And then at one o'clock in the morning, a quadcopter came over and was shooting at people. Why would they do this? Why would they do this? So those were the systems and there are, I think it's more than 30 mass casualty events. I know that certainly hospitals, field hospitals have had more people, have had days where they've had more injured come in from those sites than from general attacks and general warfare. I myself was very early on seeking out children.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yeah, I don't know politically. I only know that obviously Israel is the occupying power has full control over who does or doesn't do aid in Gaza. And the funding mechanisms and so on, I'm not privy to. And those were the systems set up, those four systems. And I've never seen anything where key message documents, you're looking through all your evidence about these things. I've never seen something so stark where the messaging I read and then I went to Gaza just as these things opened. And I had grandmothers in tears. I wasn't going to talk to them about the GHF. I was going to talk to them about our cast retribution or why children didn't have the baby formula. I had grandmothers in tears saying, how can I go to these places? It's the same people that get food every time. It's the strong, it's the young. It's not the most vulnerable. So you're not hitting a target audience. Then I would talk to families who would literally make democratic decisions.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “That they felt threatened, and so on, but that's you're asking civilians to walk through those areas. So the whole thing, it would have been ludicrous if it wasn't so lethal.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “That you suddenly had 400 aid distribution points turning into four. So these four sites were, as you say, they were heavily militarized. They were private contractors, and they were guarded outside by the IDF. Now, the reason the UN said even before these opened, even before they opened, we were very clear you can't work with these for two simple reasons. One is you can't put four distribution points in the very south of the Gaza Strip. You have to have them all over the Gaza Strip. You must make aid accessible. The other is you can't make people walk through a militarized zone to get to aid. You have to demilitarize aid. You simply must. And on paper, that made so much sense to me. You can't make people walk through a war zone to get to aid. Unfortunately, that was what was set up. And then when they started, we started seeing mass casualty events. We started seeing civilian shot when they were entering them. And we've now had explanations. The Israeli Defense Forces have explained.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Can you ask children who've had their parents killed or the elderly or the wounded or anyone, you go to where they are and you make sure your aid is making a sizable difference. We had 400 points. UNICEF sometimes would go door to door looking for malnourished children. And we saw all the indicators we want to see across the UN system, all the agencies. You saw malnutrition going down, disease going down, access to water and food going up, ceasefire broke or was broken and all that suddenly ended. And under what have now been demonstrably shown to be not true in terms of aid diversion, those arguments, there was this creation, as you say, of this aid mechanism, the GHF. They operated from four from only four sites. So as we talked about earlier in terms of this, the criticisms around the UN and so on, there's been a systematic attempt to sideline a tried and tested humanitarian system.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Yeah, so the arguments that were made by Israeli officials were of Hamas stealing all the aid, the aid diversion. Now, the good news on that front is, and UNICEF had said for 18 months just show the evidence as had others, you know, UNICEF, this is not the first war zone we've worked in. We have what's called last mile distribution, right? You track it. You have third-party monitoring all the time. Humanitarian aid is more than just food. It is those incubators. It is vaccines. It's all these things. the good sense was to show what humanitarian aid can do. And obviously we could talk your experience, Rory, from Jordan, or we talked about Afghanistan or Ukraine or Yemen, Ethiopia, what humanitarian aid is and how we do it. But we don't need to look to those examples because just during the ceasefire earlier this year, we saw 400 distribution points, exactly what humanitarian aid must be. Go to where the people are. You have to, of course, if you don't go to where the people are.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Then you've had your mom and two sisters killed, and there's no schooling, and then there's no food and you still can't leave. So whether it's our colleagues or our partners, because for UNICEF, it's kind of one and the same. If I've got a Palestinian colleague who works for UNICEF, it's just very similar to a doctor who works in a hospital that we support. Now, those doctors, I'm talking about surgeons or head nurses who go and do 20-hour shifts and then go back and live in a tent without a doubt having had family members, dear family members killed, wake up at five o'clock in the morning, try to think of ways to find water for their family, then go to the hospital to work, very distracted in a sense, hoping that knowing that if their family, someone dies, they won't be with them. And they work. So yeah, there is no operating environment. I don't think that we've ever encountered like this. But I think that stay in deliver sense is very, very important. But it's.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “No, look, I think the Secretary General's been amazing and all the UN agency, the bosses have been very clear on a stay and deliver a stay and deliver approach. It's immense. Now, of course, international staff make that decision. International staff have their families. I sit with those international staff. I know some very stressed spouses and children. When people are in those places, but they make those decisions because on a good day, it's game-changing. On a good day, you're saving a life. Palestinian staff are simply extraordinary. On one hand, they don't have a choice to leave, which is, again, like all the things I never imagined I would see or understand with this conflict of, you know, it's one thing to have your home destroyed and Palestinians are, maybe like many others, but maybe not. It's very much a place I find everyone puts 20 or 30 years of every single penny into brick and mortar, and that's gone in a second. Then they're living in a tent.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Yeah, Gazans, Palestinians right now as they think of a new offensive in Gaza city and pushing three quarters of a million of people to an area where it's already one toilet to a thousand women. Yeah, their hope is running very, very thin. I ask every person I see whether I know them as a friend, whether I've met them, a colleague, or just in a sort of quasi-journalistic sense, how are you? It sounds a stupid thing to ask. And no one really has an answer now because there's a level of trauma that's cut through and how they are. Their answer is I'm surviving. Everyone says I'm survivor, whether it's in Arabic or English. It's a daily sense for struggle. So I feel that irrespective of my sense of hope, Palestinians is running out.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Of pressure around the world, of young people, of people who are so frustrated by this impunity that's occurring. And they'll say, look, we do appreciate that, but we understand that international humanitarian law doesn't apply to us. So I don't feel like mine is hope or despair, a mine to have or not have, but I certainly now feel that a few months ago it's running very, very, very, very thin on the ground. And now, now, because I get messages every day from people and there is a generality and a grace that I've really seen. I know I can sound like a cliche, but I tell people I'm going back into Gaza, what do you need? And like, no, no, no. Just to see you. And of course, you take your medicines, but because there's a pride and a humility, which is immense. But as a young woman said to me, you know, I thought the worst thing about starving would be the hunger. The worst thing is humiliation. It's so humiliating.”

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21. “There's been almost maybe the best way to answer that is I just never felt that hope was mine in a way, that particularly six months ago, Palestinians would still hold on to hope, you know, a mother. I never forget when there was talk of a ceasefire in 2024 and a mother, it was very close. It looked very close to people I have been skeptical. It looked very close. And she said, my goodness, this is the first night in like 10 months. I can promise my daughter she had a seven-year-old daughter. I can promise my daughter in the tent. She will go to bed and she will wake up. I'll promise her that you felt this hope. And then, you know, 12 hours later the bombing started and that hope was absolutely blown up. The same way Palestinians had incredible literacy rate. They're aware of international humanitarian law. I've had more than a few Palestinians say to me, you know, because I will explain to them the outpouring of...”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “I work with UNICEF always felt pretty straightforward in a way. I learned through my backpacking days and my parents just a simple sense of I think a couple of things. One was the idea of community service and the other is opportunity, the idea of just simple opportunity. My dad used to say I don't go in the lottery because I've won the lottery of birth, right? Going up middle class and I realized that it's all about opportunity and that's what I thought UNICEF tries to provide. So I'd go around the world. Alisan, you tried to talk about the opportunity. Get a kid in a classroom. Give them the right nutrition. Allow their brain to develop because malnutrition is not just about a thin child. It's about lifelong impact on mental development. And you would just advocate for all these rights of a child. Gaza is the first place I've been where I feel like I've got to advocate that their children. The first thing I seems like I've got to do is advocate that they're people, that they're worthy of these things. And that has been obviously...”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Malnutrition in children this year 500 this year the worst malnutrition as you and I speak in Gaza in its history. That's on a denial of food. Now the reasons will be given either. There's not a denial of food or it's because Hamas is taking it all. Okay, there's no evidence base for that. We know that now from US officials. There's also no logic in denying aid. We have dozens of incubators on the wrong side of the border and a huge number of women giving birth prematurely. We have oxygen for children who need that to breathe on the wrong side of the border. It's not allowed in. Why on earth would those things be denied? But water. In Jordan we would get water supplies. We'd get tanks. We would do drilling everything we possibly could with the funding Rory in Gaza. Water is controlled.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Living in tents, let the bombs hit me. They're done. They've got nothing left. I mean, that's a horrific thing for more than one particular person to say. The self-harm that children do that goes on and on and on and on. So trauma is very, very different. It's unmanageable right now. We try to manage it. UNICEF does things. I see amazing, amazing things in Gaza where children are trying to taught and breathe and to try and think of being in a place, a little girl explained to me. I try and imagine smelling basil in my grandfather's garden, but they're living intense and they're being bombed every single night. Their parents are depressed. It's very, very hard for a child to look at their parents and their parents know full well they've lost the ability to protect that child and the child if they're a teenager knows their mum or dad's lost the ability to protect them. So trauma is aid being denied or not. We now know it is because we've got a 500% increase in”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. We are in uncharted territory when it comes to say to say trauma. There is, again, not exaggerations. There's no reason for them pure pure facts. We call Gaza a war on children because we've never seen the sheer number and proportion of children killed or wounded in a conflict in living memory. We say that every single child in Gaza needs mental health support because we've never seen a single place where every single child has that level of mental stress. And if this war expands, I know Alistair has worked a lot on mental health. If this war expands, this trauma doesn't deepen, it calcifies. So we're not just witnessing psychological wounds. We are looking potentially at like the slow erasure of an entire generation's chance of recovery. I mean, I've sat with teenage girls who have spoken about it.”

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26. “That you've got healthcare, that you've got vaccines, you know, because it's a population that's extremely vulnerable. Make sure education is, we call education a lifesaver because kids get to go into school and get a sense of normalcy, normality and hang out with their friends. Gaza look at education just to start with education because again, it gets overlooked. One of the highest literacy rates in the world. If ever there's hope in Gaza, it's because of that ability for Gazans to bounce back, for Palestinians to bounce back. And I don't mean that, Rory, is some sort of clich ⁇. I mean that I think because they've been through so, so, so much, so many hardships. But because of this incredible literacy rate, then they've got systems in place. And we saw it during that last ceasefire. I would have colleagues and Palestinians tell me when I went in June and when it was utterly horrific, but saying, James, during the ceasefire, pizza places open, cafes, cappuccinos, that's their ability to bounce back. That's based on education. Now 90%.”

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27. “Big one would be access. Access and trauma, Rory, that there you have a set population, yeah, they've lost everything. So let's remember that. I think there's a problem with the word displacement. People forget the level of trauma that comes into that. So those people have lost everything, but it's a population whereby our greatest challenge to get those children back into school, to ensure they've got the nutrition, the water, the healthcare is around funding. Our greatest challenge is in a place like Jordan would be around funding. Otherwise, people know what to do. And it's a really important marker of humanitarian work. Humanitarian work is about going to where people need your support and it's about making sure you've got the evidence base that your support is making a difference. So in a place like Jordan, we would know what to do because people like Rob Jenkins have been around and it's then literally a sense of funding. If we've got the funding, we get the kids in school, we will rebuild the water systems, make sure everyone's got a right amount of water.”

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28. “As long as your location was known, you were absolutely safe in all conditions. So it's been a very, very different operating environment without a shadow of a doubt.”

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29. “Much, much, much better. We have pretty much full access in Ukraine. I was in Ukraine a couple of days after the war started and was able to move incredibly freely. I mean, we literally got across, walked across the border from Poland into Ukraine as tens of thousands of people went the other way. I'll never forget that moment with a border official looking at me very strangely, thinking, you sure you know you're going the right way. And every time we've sought to act, we largely have access to where we need to go. Certainly the warring parties are aware of where we are. There's no threat of that on front lines and organizations like UNICEF is regularly close to frontlines. We have mobile teams that would literally go in the east across those frontline areas doing trauma work, doing healthcare work and all.”

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30. “Into malnutrition. So those things were fundamentally evident. But yes, the statements are always made. But then when your aid does come into Gaza, then as you say, Riley Allis said, the allegation is the UN's not doing their job. The responsibility for facilitating aid is with Israel in this condition. And what we have said for 21 months is to get aid in. You need multiple entry points and you need multiple routes. It's really simple. There are entry points in the north of Gaza that are about five miles from where people are, where people are starving. So open multiple routes have multiple entry points and in you go and those restrictions are made. There is only one power that has the ability to allow food in or not in. So it's been frustrating, completely frustrating. That's, as I say, this idea of the way there's a structural flaw in. Maybe it's because the United Nations, because we do have to go around.”

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31. “Yeah, it's extremely frustrating, of course. The counting trucks, it's been a game played. And, you know, the fact of arguments around malnutrition or starvation, I think John F. Kennedy said a long time ago, sincerity is subject to proof. And as I said, what I speak to, what the lessons learned from Sri Lanka about taking statements on face value, it's all about the evidence. So, for example, you'll always hear this idea that as many trucks can come in as are needed. Okay, firstly, that's just demonstrably false. There have been three blockades, one across the entire Gaza Strip for 90 days and then two others in the north of Gaza. Each one of those crushed the nutrition of everyday people and every time there's another one, then of course you're working from a much lower base. And at the same time, once you deny aid, then you're also increasing the risk of disease. That's a horrible collision there, getting a lack of water and disease.”

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32. “No, UNICEF, I mean, everyone has immense difficulties in getting aid. Now, if you're UNICEF and we're very fortunate because a lot of our work is so broad, we do cash assistance for people. It's life-saving. We do trauma work, can be life-saving. And a lot of it is supply-driven, though, of course. It's the nutritional stuff, the water, all those things are supply-driven, where it becomes really problematic, Alistair, is the denials. And if you're being denied what is core to your mandate to save lives, to get life-saving support to children, then that can only ever feel like it's combative without a doubt. At the same time,”

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33. “Always, irrespective of what's happening, but that is coming at a severe price and made even more difficult by those denials.”

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34. “The simple fact that you work for a humanitarian organization is evidence enough. Proof of that, you might give information about where you're moving to, but otherwise that's fine. Gaza is incredibly different like that, even in simple things of not just lack of food for humanitarian workers, but the level of bombardment. It's a very strange place like that. You can feel guilty, you know, getting a good meal. You can certainly feel guilty at night time, whereby you just know you've got to try and sleep through the bombardment. So you stick a pillow over your head because you need a few hours sleep. And there are, you know, nine-year-old girls sleeping in tents not far away. That's extremely unusual. Extremely unusual. I have many, you know, I have many, many colleagues with a long, long security background who say that Gaza entirely changed the rules of engagement. We're working in a security environment or a lack of security environment, unlike anything the United Nations has worked in. But I think, you know, there's been that feeling of responsibility to protect, to be there.”

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35. “Yeah, I mean, governments have a responsibility, a legal responsibility to enable aid, to facilitate aid. That's extremely important. So that's a legal responsibility. In fact, in this case, Israel is the occupying power, the legal responsibility is to provide the aid, but that's being done by the United Nations and many, many NGOs and brave Palestinians, as you say. And again, no magic pot of money for UNICEF. So that aid that we provide or the aid that is denied comes from member state governments. So in a normal scenario, then, yeah, you have that provision of aid. You're allowed to reach a population. You certainly do it safely. You certainly don't have that level of denials that go on. So if you're in a, you know, let's say, I don't know, Ukraine, if you're delivering aid in Ukraine, then you have a rite of passage that you know where you're going. You probably don't even need deconfliction zones from the military. You just know where you can move. They know where you are. Staff are in safe place.”

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36. “UNICEF has felt it's important here we can't be neutron facts. If I see a child starving, I have to say so. If I see a child bombed, I have to say, you know, this child needs medical support. We're not a news agency. We're a humanitarian human rights agency. But you're right, journalists are shut out and this information has flooded in. And I just think that when there's when a government's accused of systematic breaches of international humanitarian law, it's a mistake to always have to quote them and therefore balance the story.”

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37. “Become a sort of problem, there's become a reflex to defer to governments, to defer to government statements almost regardless of their track record, if you will. And that's, I don't know, it's like a flaw in how conflict is reported. I mean, for UNICEF, for example, as I say, early on, early on, LSE, we talked about this as being indiscriminate. It's not a word we use lightly. We warned of starvation if food would be continually denied and was blockade. We repeated that there were just no proof of evidence of aid diversion, systematic, meaningful aid diversion. And now we have statements from senior Western member state officials that that's the case. We warned of disease and we saw polio. Now, all this, this isn't to say we told you so. Not at all. It's to say, though, that we were saying it and we weren't listened to. And now there are reportedly at least 18,000 girls and boys killed. There's certainly starvation. There's horrific spikes there. So I think that's the role that...”

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38. “value and that was as we now know under the Petri report of Sri Lanka's kingdom is a great failing of the United Nations this time the United Nations has borne witness and been very very clear and candid on what we've seen and at the same time statements made by the government have been clear I think on some of their intent”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “I think obviously UNICEF's mandate, the reason we're still there, is to try and avoid politics and focus on humanitarian. I think, unfortunately or fortunately with this crisis, so many statements have been made by senior officials making it very, very clear after the horrors of October 7 what the plans were. And so those statements are absolutely evident in terms of things like no food, no water, no medicines. You know, we will treat people like human animals, I believe was one. I know those statements well and I learned that I worked in Sri Lanka, Alistair. And so I was aware then and during Sri Lanka of governments making statements around no fire zones and many civilians dying in those around denials of aid around indiscriminate attacks and around the United Nations at the time taking all those statements that they will be safe signs. There will be no indiscriminate fire taking all those statements on Facebook.”

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40. “Lifting their shirts to show their ribs. I mean, colleagues, you know, colleagues who still have employment unlike most others still have access to a meal a day. So everyone is thin, everyone's lost someone. Everyone has lost multiple family members. The stories are utterly relentless. But, you know, internationals go because it's the frontline duty and that's what people do in these situations. That's what they know they'll do. But I think it is very difficult A, because of the bombardments and because, you know, nowhere is safe in Gaza. That's not a cliche, but also because of the denials. You know, you know the difference. You see, for UNICEF, it's quite an amazing moment. You see the difference it makes when you give nutritional supplies to an acutely malnourished child. Or a vaccine. Look at the mother's eyes when they get a vaccine. We also know what happens when those things don't happen and the denials have been so great. It's very frustrating for colleagues to have this game played around them, which is a game of people's lives.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Eunice Alma Walshi, now it's surrounded by thousands and thousands and thousands of tents. So that's where we are. Others are in different places. Some have come under fire. They are meant to be deconflicted where we are. So everyone is in different places. We'll have to see how long people can stay in those places. Anyone in Gaza City now? We've got primary healthcare clinics again that are being evacuated almost literally as we speak now. It's one of the great dangers for malnutrition because we locate children, we start treating them and then they force to evacuate. So for UNICEF, for example, there's always a ceiling on staff members after a UN colleague was killed earlier this year. The ceiling was reduced. That makes things more difficult for UNICEF. We've got around 20 international staff, 70, 80 Palestinians. Every time I go back, every time, particularly this last time in June, Rory, everyone is thinner. I don't just mean people on the streets tapping your window of your vehicle doing that hand-to-mouth sign of I'm hungry or keep.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Bridge into northern Israel given a day pass by the Israeli officials, and then you go through into Gaza, usually through there's a border crossing there, very a main border crossing for aid, Kerem Shalom, sometimes through gate 96. These are just crossing straight into Gaza. And, you know, lots of checkpoints, obviously, just to get in. And then once we get to that checkpoint in Gaza, then we're met by our own vehicles, armoured vehicles or minivans, depending on which NGO and so on, which UN agency. And then we drive through Gaza and you drive depending on where NGOs stay. And it's all different places. UNICEF was very fortunate. We had excellent, excellent team early on and found us basically it's a home. It's a property. It was a German doctor builder builder house. So, you know, Fit used to fit 10 people and we've kitted it out so it can fit 30 people. We've been very lucky that's never had to evacuate. We're surrounded by evacuation orders. When I first went there, it was surrounded by sand. This is sort of car.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “It's certainly the most difficult place, the most dangerous place, and again, I'll do my very best to have no suppositions here just to give facts. It's the most dangerous place, as we know, in terms of numbers of UN workers killed, rules of engagement. I've never been in conflicts before where we've been so desperate to try and get vaccines and nutritional food to a place and we've had our vehicle come under fire and not naming names but coming under fire only from a single point where a military outfit had a checkpoint and then we hold that position then we move again when given a green light. That's never been the case. So it's very dangerous. At the moment it used to be in the early days Rory for the first year we were going through RAFA then of course the Rafah offensive that is no longer that's also very relevant we saw a 90% reduction in medical evacuations once RAFA closed that's critical but we can speak to that later if you will for now yes you go to Amman, then you take a bus, you go in across the King Hussein.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “And it had taken three days to go what is, I don't know, 45 minute drive on a good day, three days based on checkpoints, three days on based on being stopped, three days on being denied movement, three days and I got on and saw things you will never erase from your mind and many of those children on that bus died. But it was the smell there and just to realize at that point that there had been deliberate decisions made to keep those children from moving quickly, watching children push grandparents through sand, through checkpoints for a mile in wheelchairs, things that just weren't right. I had security experts who, you know, from the UK who went to things like Sandhurst and so on, who were working now in the United Nations and just from a military point of view saying no, no, there is something deeply wrong here. That was November 2023. So unfortunately, it's only got worse. And from everything we hear, it's about to deteriorate even more or get more aggressive.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “I didn't know there was such a thing as fourth degree burns. I learned that in Gaza. This most recent visit was not just seeing those things. It was hearing them. It was hearing the screams of children because of the severe lack of painkillers and walking into a room and just being surrounded. You know, the very first time I went to Gaza, which was November 2023, that was when I knew something was off, if you will. And when UNICEF very quickly, we were speaking at levels we'd not spoken about before, talking about it being a war on children. That's about evidence. That's not a headline, talking about indiscriminate. My executive director talking about the killing of so many children will not bring peace in the Middle East. And one of those things I saw was very early on at NASA Hospital in the south. And it's a war zone. I used to say this feels like a war zone. It was a war zone. I'm walking over children's bodies. Doctors are running everywhere. There are people who need amputations lying on the floor. There are tents full of people out there.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Level of indiscriminate attacks continues, level of devastation on hospitals, displacing people four, five, six times on and on and on and on it goes. Three blockades across different parts of the Gaza Strip. So everyone's working from such a lower base. They've been brought to their knees. The only things that are spiking are things like disease and trauma. So I knew that, but it was like nothing I'd seen because of water deprivation, restrictions on water, which of course, you know, as someone said to me, James, we've learned to survive without food for a week or two. We can't live without water. That was huge. And the other thing I think that really struck me was the sounds of children. I've seen more children with the wounds of war, Alistair in Gaza than any of the other 50 countries I've been to with UNICEF. And, you know, shrapnel does a particular thing to a child's body, a quadcopter shot, a burn, a blast.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yeah, unfortunately, it's the latter. It's an interesting one because I think it's also, I think there's a real structural flaw in how reporting on Gaza has been done. And I can kind of speak to that later. And I understand the part of that is because the UN is fundraising. UNICEF entirely. We are donor funder. There's no magic pool of money. So that happens. But Jaza, I've been there now five times since the horrors of October 7. Normally I'll spend half my time trying to share the stories of people, that privilege you get, access you get, and I'll spend half the time talking about what UNICEF's doing. Yaza was 95% trying to bear witness because, you know, international press, as you know very well know, a band for clear reasons and local journalists are killed in levels we've never seen. But the last time Alastair, I was there, which was just a couple of months ago, I knew it'd be worse. It's always worse. That's just a cumulative reality. Every aspect is worse.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “You'll always hear this idea that as many trucks can come in as are needed. Firstly, that's just demonstrably false. The responsibility for facilitating aid is with Israel, a girl or a boy has been killed every single hour in Gaza since that horrific attack on the 7th of October. Every single hour.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Most dangerous places we know in terms of numbers of UN workers killed. Every time I go back, every time, particularly this last time in June, Rory, everyone is thinner. Early on in last year, we talked about this as being indiscriminate. It's not a word we use lightly. We warned of starvation if food would be continually denied. It was blockade, blockade. We repeated that there were just no proof of evidence of aid diversion, systematic, meaningful aid diversion. We were saying it and we weren't listened to. We can't be neutron facts. And I see a child starving, I have to say so. When a government's accused of systematic breaches of international humanitarian law, it's a mistake to always have to quote them and therefore balance the story.”

    2025-09-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 152. "A War on Children": A Generation in Gaza at Risk (James Elder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source