Operation Cast Thy Bread

Operation Cast Thy Bread
Part of the 1948 Palestine war and the Nakba
Type	Biological warfare, war crime, ethnic cleansing
Location	Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria
Commanded by	David Ben-Gurion and Yigael Yadin
Target	Palestinian Arab civilians and allied Arab armies
Date	April – December 1948
Executed by	Israel Haganah  Israel Defense Forces
Outcome	Zionist forces cause a typhus epidemic in Acre and capture the city, infecting dozens of local citizens Depopulation of several Palestinian Arab villages
Casualties	Unknown

Operation Cast Thy Bread was a top-secret biological warfare operation conducted by the Haganah and later the Israel Defense Forces that began in April 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war. The Haganah used typhoid bacteria to contaminate drinking water wells in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Its objective was to frighten and prevent Palestinian Arabs from returning to villages captured by the Yishuv and make conditions difficult for Arab armies attempting to retake territories. The operation resulted in severe illness among local Palestinian citizens. In the final months of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Israel gave orders to expand the biological warfare campaign into neighboring Arab states such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, but they were not carried out. Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion and IDF chief of general staff Yigael Yadin oversaw and approved the use of biological warfare.^[1][2]

Abba Eban, representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, strongly denied the operation and sought to block further investigations by accusing the Arab states of engaging in "antisemitic incitement". Operation Cast Thy Bread did not achieve the crippling effects its advocates had hoped for, and was discontinued by December 1948.^[3] In July 1948, the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee reported to the United Nations several war crimes committed by Zionist forces, including the use of "bacteriological warfare".^[4]