Once every two weeks, Sarah Aaronsohn would hold parties at the
botanical experimental station that were as “licentious as in those
conducted in the palaces of Rome,” as Aziz Bey, the head of Turkish
intelligence, described them in his diary. Among the guests at the par-
ties were officers of the Turkish coast guard. When they got drunk,
they gave away information, which was conveyed to a British ship
lying offshore.
The group was able to operate only eight months before being de-
tected. The members of the NILI spy network were careless in every
aspect of subterfuge and secrecy, and they endangered the entire vil-
lage of Zichron Yaakov where they lived and out of which they op-
erated. The group was exposed because they used carrier pigeons to
send messages. Using these birds requires expert skills that the NILI
people lacked, so it is not surprising that not one of the pigeons dis-
patched by the NILI members reached its destination. All but two
were lost; one of the two surviving birds alighted in the pigeon coop
of Ahmad Bey, the Turkish governor in Caesarea, precisely when he
was feeding his own pigeons. He caught it and discovered attached to
its foot a note that Sarah had written in code.
In October 1917, at the close of the Jewish festival of Tabernacles,
the Turks surrounded Zichron Yaakov and arrested her father Fischel
Aaronsohn, her brother Zvi, and several more members of NILI. They
were taken to the command post in the center of the village, where
their captors tortured them to extract the hiding place of Lishansky
and other members of the network. Sarah Aaronsohn bravely with-
stood the torture even when they hung her by her hands, whipped the
soles of her feet, placed scorching eggs in her armpits and between her
thighs, and pulled out her fingernails. The torments continued for
three days, and the screams were heard all through the village. About
to be sent to Damascus to be hanged, Sarah received permission to go
home to change her clothes. Making use of the opportunity, she shot
herself there. After her death, NILI’s activities ceased. With the death
of Aharon Aaronsohn in an air accident on May 1919, the group fi-
nally broke up. Officially the leadership of the Jewish community in
Palestine dissociated itself from NILI’s activities.NIMRODI, YA’ACOV (1926– ).Born in Iraq to a poor family with
10 children, Nimrodi was brought up from childhood in Jerusalem.208 • NIMRODI, YA’ACOV06-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:25 AM Page 208