Manya Wilbushewitch was born in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) to wealthy Jewish parents and grew up on the family estate near Łosośna.

She was a descent of Comte Vibois, an officer in Napoleon's army who converted to Judaism after marrying a Jewish woman.

Whilst in prison she fell in love with Sergey Zubatov, agent provocateur and head of the Tsarist Secret Police in Moscow.

Zubatov conceived a plan that matched Manya's ideological notions, through which workers would form "tame" organizations that would work for reform rather than for overthrow of the government.

The party was successful in leading strikes because the secret police supported it, but was loathed by the Bund and other Jewish socialist groups.

Experiencing, as she put it, 'severe emotional distress' following the failure of her political organization and arrest of her friends she contemplated suicide.

According to Shabtai Teveth she killed a door-to-door salesman who called at her hideout in Odessa thinking he was a member of the secret police.

[1][3] She accepted an invitation from her brother Nachum, who was the founder of the Shemen soap factory in Haifa, to accompany him on a research expedition to some of the wilder places of Palestine.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild had bought land in the area, but the Ottoman government stipulated that no Jews be allowed to settle there.

A small group that had disregarded the decision was evicted, so the Baron resorted to leasing out the plots of land to Arab Fellahin.

Despite Israel's relationships with other women they continued their political activities together and Manya repeatedly nursed him during his recurring bouts of illness.

Manya left for Paris, where one of her brothers was editor of an agricultural journal, to research the feasibility of her ideas and then to convince the Baron to back them.

Meir Cohen, an old friend from Minsk, came to Paris seeking the aid of the Jewish community to buy arms so they could defend themselves.

To deliver the final consignment, Manya disguised herself as a young rabbanit from Frankfurt, bringing eight cases of scriptures, a gift for the yeshivot of Ukraine.

Hankin convinced Eliahu Krauze to give them stewardship over a failing agricultural experiment in Sejera for a year.

The farm was used as cover by Bar Giora a newly formed underground militia founded by Israel Shochat and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.

Three years later they moved to Constantinople where Manya taught German whilst Israel studied for an Ottoman law degree[12] In November 1914 she was arrested and sent to Damascus for interrogation[13] and was subsequently deported, along with her husband to Bursa, in Turkey.

Due to a series of differences of opinion between her and Pinhas Rutenberg, the transfer of funds was frozen and the two didn't speak for years.

However, she did manage to send several thousand dollars to her husband who was waiting in Vienna, earmarked for the purchase of weapons for the Haganah.

One of their bases was at Kfar Giladi and their first action, May 1923, was the assassination of Tawfiq Bey, a senior police officer in Jaffa at the time of the riots.

She subsequently broke off relations with Ben Gurion over his failure to come to her defence when it was known that the Haganah in Jerusalem had ordered the killing.