German public broadcaster ZDF faced criticism on Tuesday, October 28th, after it emerged that a production company technician it had been working with in Gaza was a Hamas operative.
The 37-year-old employee was killed in an airstrike in Gaza. Immediately after the Israeli action against the terrorist, ZDF harshly criticized Israel’s actions. ZDF stated that it had been working with the Palestinian company PMP since 1996. It stated that it knew nothing about the man’s Hamas membership, and its own research had found “no evidence” of this. But then Israel proved otherwise.
Sources from the Israeli Defense Forces revealed that Israel had identified the Palestinian man, named Ahmed As’ad Muhammad Abu Matar, as a platoon commander for the radical Islamic Hamas group. The employee of the ZDF partner company was therefore not a random victim, but was deliberately targeted, they said.
The document contains extensive information about the man and was submitted to ZDF as proof of his Hamas membership. The evidence dates back to 2021—meaning the man had been a member of the Palestinian terrorist organization for at least four years.
Therefore, despite the previous denial, ZDF announced on Monday, October 27th that the Israeli army had provided proof that an employee of production company PMP killed in a strike this month was in fact a member of the terror group.
“In response, ZDF has suspended cooperation (with the company) until further notice,” it said in a statement. As things stand, there is no evidence to suggest that other PMP employees are Hamas members, ZDF stated.
Ottilie Klein, an MP for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s so-called conservative CDU party, called for a “thorough and complete explanation of how this could have happened and whether there are any other similar cases,” telling the Bild daily
Above all, it must be investigated whether Hamas and its supporters had any influence on the nature and content of ZDF’s reporting.
The German Journalists’ Association (DJV) had called for a “full investigation” into the incident.
