Monday, August 26, was another day of warfare in the Gaza Strip. Mohammad “Medo” Halimy, a 19-year-old Gazan TikTok blogger, arrived at a makeshift café to go online and meet his friend and video partner Murad Talal. Suddenly, there was an airstrike nearby. Murad felt pain in his neck and saw Halimy “bleeding from his head,” he told the Associated Press last Friday. Ten minutes later, an ambulance arrived to evacuate Halimy to the hospital. A few hours later, he was pronounced dead.

Halimy began uploading videos to TikTok and Instagram in May. He became highly popular within just a few weeks: last weekend, his TikTok account had amassed 4 million likes, with over 215,000 followers on TikTok and some 92,000 on Instagram. As of Sunday, Halimy’s TikTok had grown to 257,300 followers and 4.8 million likes, while his Instagram account reached 103,000 followers.

Adi Halimy, Mohammad’s father, confirmed his son’s death in a conversation with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last week. He described him as a “special” person who made people outside Gaza “feel the suffering of the people in the tents.” His brother, Zaid, said: “Medo was always a positive person who loved life. We will keep working on his dream and spread his message to the entire world.”

On August 30, the Israeli military told the BBC that it could not confirm that there had been a strike in Khan Yunis the day Halimy was killed, adding that it was continuing to “counter threats while persisting to mitigate harm to civilians.” It told Haaretz in response to a request for comment: “We know of no attack on the date and time mentioned. Should further details come up, the issue will be examined.”

A screenshot from the late 19-year-old Medo Halimy’s TikTok account.Credit: Screenshot, Medo Halimy TikTok

Halimy became known around the world, even being interviewed in Time magazine in August. “I had nothing to do but to just keep thinking about what’s going on with my life and how it’s now all destroyed, all gone,” Halimy said in that interview. “I felt like I could report [about] my life and what’s going on with it in a different way, which you kind of see in my videos. I have a different perspective of life, and I wanted to show that to people.”

Word of his death spread like wildfire, and he was eulogized on social media. “I was scrolling last night and came across Medo (Mohammad) Halimy, a creator who has been documenting his life during the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” wrote content creator Safwan AhmedMia, a.k.a. SupeSaf, a British tech influencer. “I then discovered that he was killed just a couple of days ago as a result of an Israeli air strike. What’s even more upsetting is that the bombs may have been sold to Israel by our government…”

A recipe video by Halimy.

Time Magazine journalist Yasmeen Serhan posted on X: "Earlier this month, I interviewed Mohammad ’Medo’ Halimy, a Palestinian content creator whose vlogs showed the reality of life under bombardment in Gaza.

“Halimy was supposed to be starting college at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, where he planned to study business administration, before the war… Unlike many TikToks coming out of Gaza, Halimy’s were original, informative, and – despite the horrifying circumstances – even joyful at times. He gave his 156K+ followers a real insight into Palestinian life in all of its hardships and resilience.”

Young Gazans Omar Shareed and Mohammed Herzallah, who run “The Mohammed and Omar Show,” a popular Instagram account presenting scenes from Gazan life, wrote in a story that Omar had seen Halimy as a brother. Followers on TikTok, X and Instagram paid their respects to Halimy by posting parts of his videos on their personal accounts, adding, “RIP Medo, you will be missed.” American TikTok influencer Buffy Ackerman posted a video of herself crying, with the text: “He was by the beach, trying to find a peaceful moment for the internet to connect when they hit him with an [airstrike]. His family is safe but still needs help getting out.”

Life in a tent

Until October 7, Halimy was a young man with dreams and aspirations to grow and study. In 2021-2022, he took part in a student exchange program sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year in Texas, attending Harker Heights High School. It’s hard not to notice his fluent English and direct, authentic way of addressing viewers, which is evident in every single one of his videos.

“Let me show you what a day in my tent life looks like,” he said in a video from June 13. “I started my day with a cup of coffee, and then I went to get some drinking water. It’s my turn today. And then, when I got back, we made some bread and I had tea. Then I lined up my beard and I listened to some music.” He nodded in time to the song in English playing in the background – “After that I and my mom made this dessert. It’s called layali lubnan, translated to ’nights of Lebanon.’ It’s really delicious and it gets done with raisins, pistachios and a lot of other nuts, which is super rare to find.”

A video of Halimy planting peppermint.

Halimy then met his friend on the beach. “When we got back, the dessert was ready to eat, so we had some and drank some coffee with it.” On June 22, he discussed his decision to counter the boredom in the tent by growing some plants, “until this war is over.” He took an empty tin can, put some earth in it and planted some peppermint. “This is my little baby. I use [peppermint] so much and right now it’s a bit too hard to find.” He gave it some water and asked his followers to help him name the plant.

Halimy’s TikTok success was no accident. He knew how to create videos that the TikTok algorithm would push to users: short and with attractive, intriguing content. For a Western user, it was another video by a young Gazan content creator. For Halimy, it was life or death. On October 8, he posted a video of his family on TikTok capturing the terror amid the sounds of explosions and his sister Rahaf’s weeping. “Don’t be scared,” he said, trying to calm her, adding, “God help us.” This is nearly the only video in which Halimy shows the fear of death that is pervasive in Gaza.

Last June, he told culture magazine Fault that he made videos “focusing only on the positive aspects. I don’t show any of our real struggles and hardships that we go through daily.” Under the successful TikToker surface lie the pain of displacement and a lack of basic living conditions.

Last October, he and his family relocated from Gaza City to Khan Yunis. They stayed at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school that served as a shelter for displaced people. In December, the family moved again, this time to Rafah, where they lived in a makeshift tent made of nylon sheets.

“[T]he whole living in a tent thing is very hard,” he wrote on a personal fundraising page on GoFundMe, which he launched in January. “[S]o cold at night, so wet when it rains and so hot when the sun is up, but I think rainy nights are the worst! I can’t describe how terrible it is sleeping under the rain and getting all our blankets and mattresses wet.” He wrote about the family’s financial situation, which had become difficult because of the war, asking friends and relatives for help. On June 15, he relocated with his family for the third time, going back to Khan Yunis, where they lived in a tent.

Most of Halimy’s videos show him smiling, trying to derive meaning from every moment in the tent. He washes his button-down shirt, buys tins of sardines, cooks a spicy tomato dish and puts the tinned sardines in it. He speaks of the struggle to obtain basic commodities because “everything is expensive.” His wish was to raise $120,000 to leave the Gaza Strip: him, his parents, his sister Rahaf and brothers Zaid, Zain, Ahmad and Abdelrahman.

The final video posted by Halimy.

Before his death last Monday, Halimy managed to upload one last video – watched 4.2 million times since then – documenting another day in the tent. First, he had coffee, then lay down on a mattress because of the heat. He took his laptop and phone to charge them in an improvised area made of nylon sheets. While there, he ordered some lemonade for refreshment. At 6 P.M., he said in the video, “I went to the tent café to get connected to the internet and I edited the video. Then, I went live on TikTok.”

He will be remembered in the Western world as the TikTok blogger from Gaza who was killed in the war. His personal story reflects the tragedy of young people in Gaza who have been left with no future. Still, despite the chaos reigning in Gaza, he found some solace in interacting with his TikTok followers. “It is very uplifting,” he told Fault, sharing his insight: “Enjoy your life as much as you can; you never know what might happen or how long it will last.”

Sheren Falah Saab