Palestinian TikTok Star Killed by Israeli Airstrike After Sharing Gaza Life

CAIRO (AP) — It was another day of war in Gaza and another day of what 19-year-old Palestinian TikTok star Medo Halimy called his “Tent Life.”

As he often did in videos documenting life’s mundane absurdities in the enclave, Halimy on Monday walked to a local internet cafe — essentially a tent with Wi-Fi for displaced Palestinians to connect to the outside world — to meet his friend and collaborator Talal Murad. They snapped a selfie with the caption “Finally Reunited” on Instagram and began catching up.

Then came a flash of light, as 18-year-old Murad described — an explosion of white heat and sprayed earth. Murad felt pain in his neck while Halimy was bleeding from his head. A car on the coastal road in front of them had been hit by an apparent Israeli airstrike. It took 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Hours later, doctors declared Halimy dead.

“He represented a message of hope and strength,” said Murad on Friday, still recovering from his shrapnel wounds and reeling from the loss of his friend. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on the strike.

Tributes to Halimy poured in Friday from friends as far away as Harker Heights, Texas, where he had spent a year in 2021 as part of a State Department-sponsored exchange program. “Medo was the life of the hangout … humor, kindness, and wit, all things that can never be forgotten,” said Heba al-Saidi, alumni coordinator for the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study program. “He was bound for greatness, but he was taken too soon.”

Halimy’s death also sparked a wave of grief on social media, where his followers expressed shock and sadness as if they, too, had lost a close friend.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people and resulted in about 250 being taken hostage, has produced torrents of numbingly familiar images: bombed-out buildings, contorted bodies, and chaotic hospital halls.

The conflict has claimed more than 40,000 Palestinian lives, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants, and has caused a humanitarian disaster. It has also turned legions of ordinary teenagers, with nothing to do but survive, into social media war correspondents.

“We worked together, it was a kind of resistance that I hope to continue,” said Murad, who collaborated with Halimy on “The Gazan Experience,” an Instagram account that answered questions from followers worldwide trying to understand life in the besieged enclave, which is inaccessible to foreign journalists.

Halimy started his own TikTok account after taking refuge with his family in Muwasi, the southern coastal area designated by Israel as a humanitarian safe zone. They had initially fled Israel’s invasion of Gaza City to the southern city of Khan Younis before moving again due to bombardment.

His content surprised many, said his friend Helmi Hirez, 19. By turning his camera on the intimate details of life in Gaza, he offered viewers a rare look at the war’s maddening tedium, often overlooked in mainstream news coverage.

“If you wonder what living in a tent is actually like, come with me to show you how I spend my day,” Halimy says in one of his many “tent life” diary videos from the encampment. He filmed himself going about his day: waiting in long lines for drinking water, showering with a jar and a bucket, scavenging ingredients to make baba ganoush, and becoming very, very bored.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world were captivated. His videos went viral, some amassing more than 2 million views on TikTok.

Even when recounting tragedies or fretting over Israel’s bombardment, Halimy’s friends said he found a way to channel his grief and anxiety through humor. “Very annoying,” he says with an eye roll when the buzz of an Israeli drone interrupts one of his TikTok recipe videos, or “As you can see, the transportation here is not five stars,” when crammed between men in a pickup truck heading to Deir al-Balah. During a Monopoly game interrupted by Israeli projectiles, he quips, “Anyway, I lost.”

In his last video, posted Monday just hours before he was killed, he films himself scribbling in his notebook with pages covered in black redaction bars. “I started designs for my new secret project,” he said from the tent cafe that would later be hit, using his usual playful, yet serious tone.

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Source: Associated Press