Last year, Mohammad “Medo” Halimy, a 19-year old Palestinian born and raised in Gaza, briefly became a star on social media for his TikTok page showing his day-to-day life during Israel’s war. “I kept watching videos about Gaza online, and they were all very sad and depressing. Since I am a positive person, I didn’t like any of those videos. So, I decided to create a page on TikTok and start posting my daily life on both TikTok and Instagram, focusing only on the positive aspects,” Halimy said in an interview last summer.

His TikTok page, which showed Halimy cooking, gardening, waiting for water, and spending time with friends, rapidly amassed a large following, growing to nearly 190,000 followers. But Halimy’s online celebrity was cut short last summer, when he was killed by what was reported to be shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike.

Halimy’s death prompted an outpouring of grief from his followers across the world. Initial reports framed his death as collateral damage from an airstrike carried out by the Israeli military, and interviews given by friends of Halimy to the international press also stated that an explosion targeting a nearby car had preceded his death. But an American doctor who treated Halimy in Gaza, attempting to save his life after he was brought into the intensive care unit of Nasser Hospital, said that his wounds were not consistent with shrapnel from an airstrike. Instead, there was a single entry and exit point from his skull.