Sarah Aaronsohn, her brothers Aaron and Alexander, and their sister Rivka, together with their friend (and Rivka's fiancé) Avshalom Feinberg formed and led Nili.^[7][8]

In 1915, even before the group commenced operations, the Ottomans imprisoned Feinberg on suspicion of spying, which was not true at the time. When Feinberg was arrested for espionage and held in Beersheba, Yosef Lishansky joined Nili in December 1915. Because he was active in the south, he was recruited by Feinberg to pass information to and from Sarah Aaronsohn, who was operating from Atlit.^{[citation needed]}

From March to October 1915, a plague of locusts stripped areas in and around Palestine of almost all vegetation. The Turkish authorities, worried about feeding their troops, turned to world-famous botanist and the region's leading agronomist, Aaron Aaronsohn, who requested the release of his friend and assistant, Avshalom Feinberg. The team fighting the locust invasion was given permission to move around the country, enabling them to collect strategic information about Ottoman camps and troop deployment.^{[citation needed]}

For months, the group was not taken seriously by British intelligence, and attempts by Aaron Aaronsohn and Avshalom Feinberg to establish communication channels in Cairo and Port Said failed. Only after Aaronsohn arrived in London (by way of Berlin and Copenhagen) and owing to his reputation, was he able to obtain cooperation from the diplomat Sir Mark Sykes.^{[citation needed]}

Sarah oversaw operations in Palestine from Zikhron Ya'akov.^{[citation needed]}

Attempting to reach Egypt on foot, Avshalom Feinberg was killed and Yosef Lishansky was wounded but managed to reach British lines.^{[citation needed]}

From February to September 1917, the steam yacht Managem regularly sailed to the Palestinian coast near Atlit.^[9] Lishansky swam ashore to collect Nili information and to pass money sent by American Jews to the starving Yishuv. However, the presence of German submarines made the trips too risky and the group switched to homing pigeons.

In the fall of 1917, the Bosnian mudir of Qisarya, Ahmad Bek Kat-huda Ćehajić, exposed Nili when he intercepted one of its carrier pigeons.^[1] The Ottomans were able to decipher the Nili code (based on Hebrew, Aramaic, French, and English) within one week. As a result, the Ottomans were able to unravel the spy network, whereupon the leadership of the Yishuv and the Hashomer disassociated itself from Nili. One Nili member, Na'aman Belkind, was captured by the Ottomans and reportedly revealed information about the group.^{[citation needed]}

In October 1917, the Ottomans surrounded Zikhron Ya'akov and arrested numerous people, including Sarah Aaronsohn, who committed suicide after four days of torture. Other prisoners were incarcerated in Damascus. Lishansky and Belkind were hanged.

Nili's "irresponsibility" for not coordinating their operations with the Zionist leadership, thereby endangering the Yishuv, was the cause of a longstanding controversy among the Jewish community of the British Mandate of Palestine and subsequently of the State of Israel.^{[citation needed]} The issue was officially resolved in November 1967, when Feinberg's remains were reinterred on Mount Herzl with full military honors, with eulogies delivered by both Speaker of the Knesset and chief chaplain of the IDF.^{[citation needed]}

The Aaronsohn home in Zikhron Ya'akov, Beit Aaronsohn, has been preserved as a museum and memorial to Nili. West of Zikhron Ya'akov is a moshav called Givat Nili. The settlement Nili in the western Binyamin region is also named for Nili. Many streets throughout Israel bear the Nili name. In December 2015. the Israel Post marked the centenary of Nili with a special stamp issue.^[10]

• Nili at the Jewish Virtual Library
• The locusts plague in Palestine of 1915 at the US Library of Congress
• Aaron Aharonson
• Prof. Billie Melman, Sarah Aaronsohn (Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Jewish Women's Archive)