Public-service German television broadcaster ZDF has been left red-faced after Israel proved one of its production companies’ employees was a Hamas member.
ZDF has worked for decades with a production company that employed the Hamas member.
The man, a 37-year old engineer, together with his eight-year-old son, was recently killed by an Israeli military strike on Gaza where they were based.
The public broadcaster firmly condemned the attack “on media workers”.
On October 20, ZDF Middle East correspondent Thomas Reichart announced that “our Palestinian colleagues from Palestine Media Production (PMP) were hit by a rocket at their site in Deir al-Balah in southern Gaza”.
ZDF said there had been no warning prior to the attack, which took place the previous day.
“It is unacceptable that media workers are attacked in the performance of their work,” ZDF editor-in-chief Bettina Schausten said.
She added: “Our thoughts are with the victims and their families, to whom we express our deepest sympathy.”
Daniel Gerlach, a German Middle East expert often invited on to ZDF programmes, said: “No one can really claim that he [the PMP employee] posed any military danger.”
ZDF initially stated that its own research showed no evidence of the employee being connected to Hamas.
At the funeral service the day after the rocket attack, a blue vest with the inscription “Press” was placed on his veiled body, German news outlet Die Welt reported.
The Israeli army was unable to provide any information when first asked but about a week later, it did reply.
Yesterday, German news outlet Bild was able to look into the army documents, which apparently proved the PMP employee’s background.
The Palestinian, who’s real name was Ahmed As’ad Muhammad Abu Matar, was a platoon leader in Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas explicitly listed as a terrorist organisation by most western nations and Egypt, Bild reported.
He was responsible for handling transmission technology as an engineer for Hamas.
In response, ZDF said in a press release it “welcomes the fact that the Israeli army has complied with the request to clarify the identity of the killed employee of the production company PMP in Gaza”.
It continued: “The 37-year-old, who as an engineer was responsible for handling the transmission technology, was therefore a member of the terrorist organisation Hamas.”
ZDF added that it had suspended its co-operation with PMP “until further notice”.
PMP is located in Deir el Balah in the south of the Gaza Strip and has been working with ZDF since 1996. The employee in question had been working for PMP since 2013.
The German public broadcaster stressed: “As things stand, there are no indications that any other employees of PMP could be Hamas members. The IDF has also provided ZDF with no indications of this.”
In Germany, Ottilie Klein, the spokeswoman for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group for culture and media, called the situation “a scandal that deeply shakes confidence in public broadcasting”.
“It must be checked whether Hamas and its supporters had influence on the type and content of ZDF‘s reporting through this production company,” she said.
CDU chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, Armin Laschet, said: “The fact that ZDF does not notice in 12 years of co-operation that one of its employees is actively involved in terrorism against Israel at the same time as a trained leader for Hamas speaks for itself.”
Alternative For Germany (AfD) MP Martin Sichert accused ZDF of having financed “an anti-western, anti-Semitic, Islamist terrorist organisation” with German broadcasting fees.
The Greens were more positive. Bundestag Vice President Omid Nouripour said on X: “It is strong that ZDF reacts quickly and consistently to the new evidence.”
Conservative media are connecting the scandal to its reporting on the war between Hamas and Israel.
“No TV station or newspaper really knows whether the information coming from the Gaza Strip comes from Hamas,” Filipp Piatov, deputy head of the political department of Bild, wrote.
“Hamas has recognised that propaganda is its most important weapon and is doing everything it can to infiltrate western media. Real, critical reporters are suppressed – terrorists are infiltrated into media houses or partner companies.”
He concluded: “Hopefully, ZDF will now wake up and put its entire Gaza coverage to the test. The broadcaster owes this to the licence fee payers.”
Apollo News noted: “Anyone who follows the reporting of the German public broadcasters on Israel and Gaza will not be surprised.
“In some cases, these stations act like Hamas loudspeakers anyway, for example by uncritically reproducing the very questionable death figures of the ‘health authority in Gaza” one-to-one’.”
It noted this was a global problem, pointing to other journalists who reportedly have close ties with Hamas.
An internal report by the BBC concluded that the media giant breached its own editorial guidelines by failing to disclose that the narrator of a Gaza documentary was the son of a Hamas official. https://t.co/N1BV5Ssaj4
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 15, 2025
