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Israel - Biological Weapons

Israel is believed to have the capacity to produce chemical warfare agents, and probably has stocks of bombs, rockets, and artillery shells. Public reports that a mustard and nerve gas production facility was established in 1982 in the Dimona restricted area are apparently erroneous. Israel is also probably poised to rapidly produce biological weapons, though there are no public reports of currently active production effort.

For decades, rumors and testimonies swirled about Israeli troops sent to poison wells in Arab villages during the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Now, researchers have located official documentation of the ‘Cast Thy Bread' operation. Over the decades following the war rumours circulated that Israel had used bacteria, alongside conventional weaponry, in its battle against Palestine's Arabs and the surrounding Arab states.

Historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Z. Kedar found Israeli military documentation that cast aside any doubt over its occurrence and provided new details regarding its scope. The declassification of files in the Israeli military archives, discovery of a crucial letter in private hands, and the publication of a handful of memoirs relating to 1948 have enabled bridging the divide between rumour and fact; to explain the campaign's origins; to reconstruct its stages, beginning in April 1948; to identify who was involved – including Israel's prime minister, David Ben-Gurion and the Israeli army's de facto chief of general staff, Yigael Yadin, as well as leading Israeli scientists – and who actively opposed it; and to delineate and assess what the campaign actually achieved or failed to achieved.

Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha told the UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, at their meeting on 29 May 1948, shortly after the Egyptian capture of two Arab Platoon operatives outside Gaza contaminating ‘the water supply of the Egyptian army' with ‘vials of cholera and dysentery germs': ‘The Egyptian Government held the Jewish authorities responsible for this since this sort of thing had to be planned inasmuch as it was not possible to buy germs for such purposes in retail shops. Scientists and high officials had to be involved… [in] such well-planned acts.'

The typhoid and dysentery germs dispensed in 1948 were basically non-lethal. Benny Morris & Benjamin Z. Kedar concluded "The use of the bacteria was apparently fairly limited in Israel/Palestine during April-December 1948, and apart from Acre, seems to have caused no epidemic and few casualties. At least, that is what emerges from the available documentation. Perhaps the meagre use and reach of CTB was partly due to the opposition the campaign gave rise to, both high and low, in Israel's defence establishment. Clearly it triggered moral repugnance."

One report claimed that Russia once used fentanyl as a biological weapon in 2002. And in September 1997, Israeli Mossad agents attempted the assassination of Khaled Mashall, a Hamas leader, by injecting him with Fentanyl. But fentanyl is a chemical, not biological agent.

Under the terms of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the States Parties undertake not to develop, produce, stockpile, or acquire biological agents or toxins “r toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes” as well as weapons and means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.

The term "toxic" relates to poisonous or deadly effects on the body by inhalation (breathing), ingestion (eating), or absorption, or by direct contact with a chemical. The term “toxin” usually is used when talking about toxic substances produced naturally. A toxin is any poisonous substance of microbial (bacteria or other tiny plants or animals), vegetable, or synthetic chemical origin that reacts with specific cellular components to kill cells, alter growth or development, or kill the organism. The term “toxicant” is used when talking about toxic substances that are produced by or are a by-product of human-made activities.