A police report and an interview with a former Zionist operative form the basis of Avi Shlaim's claim that he has uncovered "undeniable proof" of Israeli involvement in bombings which drove Jews out of Iraq in the early 1950s, the British-Israeli historian told Middle East Eye.
Shlaim's autobiography Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, published earlier this month, details his childhood as an Iraqi Jew and subsequent exile to Israel.
It also includes research about a number of bombings in Iraq which prompted a mass exodus of Jews from the country between 1950 and 1951, most of whom, like he and his family, ended up in Israel.
On Sunday, Shlaim told Middle East Eye that he had uncovered "incontrovertible evidence of Zionist underground involvement in the bombs".
As part of the evidence, the historian cited an extensive interview he carried out with Yaakov Karkoukli, a former member of the Zionist underground in Baghdad in the 1950s.