Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a matched gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

Arab Knesset Member Named in Ashley Madison Leak

The government email address of Knesset Member Taleb Abu Arrar was one of millions leaked from AshleyMadison.com, a website for people seeking extramarital affairs.

Abu Arrar, of the Arab Joint List party, already has two wives, according to the Jerusalem Post. Because polygamy is illegal in Israel, he has a common-law marriage with his second wife. He has 10 children.

“Someone signed up with my email address in order to sully my good name,” he said, according to the Post. He plans to file a complaint with police.

Knesset members’ aides can also access the members’ official email addresses.

The address was revealed among some 36 million others Tuesday night by hackers who stole the information last month. They had threatened to release the email addresses unless the website shut down, which it has not. The site claims to have 38 million users.

Avid Life Media, which owns the website, said in a statement that “These are illegitimate acts that have real consequences for innocent citizens who are simply going about their daily lives,” according to Reuters.

It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!

This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions. 

We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.

As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday! 

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.