Ashkenazi Models: Smoke, Mirrors, and Misdirection

[Steven Parker]

My preprint:
Reference Population Design and the Illusion of Genetic Intermediacy in Mediterranean Population Models
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202601.2134

Explantion of the scam my preprint is calling out:

For decades "scientists" like Dr Harry Ostrer and his unsavory droogs have been playing a politicized shell game with Ashkenazi population genetics studies.

The hustle works like this: ignore the fact that Ashkenazi cluster autosomally in southern Italy directly over the very ancient large-scale Jewish communities their Magia Gracia and later Roman ancestors lived in. So how to successfully ignore this? Simple: first, just memory hole the fact that there is a southern Italy.

Oh lookie here! Cleatus “Europe,” which for some reason starts in Tuscany, and “Italians,” who are northern Italians, while Ashkenazim are not in that PCA space.
Let’s spam this ad nauseam on our Reddit posts and Substack blogs.

https://i.ibb.co/9HSbKrG4/A-PCA-plot-of-samples-from-Ashkenazi-and-other-Jewish-populations.png

Nobody will ask about southern Italy and Aegean Greeks being erased from the PCA of so-called “Europe” because everyone is mindless cattle except us. Not a one.

In fact, Ashkenazim are literally the only population where we’re told to ignore autosomal PCA plotting.
At the same time we’re told to ignore their ancestral Italkim Jewish historical communities that cluster on top of or adjacent to modern southern Italians on principal components analysis.

https://i.ibb.co/7x95GrD9/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-06-23-56-Ashkenazi-Origins-and-Why-Southern-Italy-Matters-Genetic-Ancestr.png
Figure 1. Global25 similarity maps for Maltese and Italkim Jews. In both cases, the strongest similarity localizes to Southern Italy, Sicily, and adjacent central Mediterranean regions. Neither map shows primary anchoring in Northern Italy or Tuscany, and the overall geographic structure of the two maps is closely comparable. Nobody disputes that Maltese are direct overwhelming genetic ancestors of southern Italians.

https://i.ibb.co/jv7g1nR3/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-06-18-34-Ashkenazi-Origins-and-Why-Southern-Italy-Matters-Genetic-Ancestr.png
Figure 2. Global25 distance between Italkim Jews and Maltese is 0.0239. That value falls within the range observed between Maltese and multiple Southern Italian populations, consistent with normal intra-regional variation rather than a distinct external source population.

Italkim PCA and FST overlap with southern Italians can’t be due to having “northern Italian,” Central European, or Slavic admixture on top of Israelite ancestry.
What miraculous process would it take to do that since Italkim never left the region of what today is called southern Italy and have no northern Italian, Central European, or Slavic admixture?
This is my falsification test to knock down their house of cards.

Their politicized dogma regurgitates study after study comparing Ashkenazim to Russians or French, and when pesky southern Europe comes up they have an answer for that, which I call the trifecta of deception: Tuscany, Sardinia, and Northern Italy, all cherry-picking southern Italy out to perfection.
If anyone notices, just call them "antisemitic" or some other slur and accuse them of being narrative-driven for daring to call out your politicized masquerade as population genetics.

If a person dares to actually go where the data takes them and tries to get a preprint published on your little clique at bioRxiv.org, just circle the wagons and reject to protect your flimsy politicized narrative.
And if, by some miracle now in the late 2020s, you’re forced to answer why Ashkenazim cluster over southern Italy on PCA and FST, just say that magically they have a Levantine dad and their mom’s genetic lotto of European admixture miraculously pulls them into southern Italy’s orbit on FST and PCA.
Nobody will bother asking how this is also the case with Italkim Jews of southern Italy. But I will.

The narratives these charlatans have cemented is firmly now scientific dogma, and even the more recent studies like Waldman 2022 that finally included southern Italians still played a most pathetic shell game with naming convention.

Erfurt = ME (“Middle East”) is Erfurt = SE (“southern European”) because that is what these results overwhelmingly point to.

https://i.ibb.co/6cX5DkdW/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-05-25-40-F2-large-jpg-JPEG-Image-1280-992-pixels-Scaled-60.png

Not only that, but Waldman et al. also included the northern Italian modeling to again muddy the waters.
As of this date, no geneticist has dedicated a paper explicitly devoted to comparing Ashkenazim to southern Italians and related Aegean Greeks. This is what my paper exposes.

If anyone has an interest in actually researching Ashkenazi population, you can read my paper.
So far I have just been attacked by the usual suspects that have no ability to quote my study and just smear me with personal insults. This is what they do routinely, I see it with Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Tyler Oliveira, and many others: deplatform, get people fired, accuse them of being a bigot for daring to ask questions that you can’t or won’t answer.

[Isinimo]

Both Palestinian Muslims and Diasporan Jews have relatively low Levantine / Canaanite admixture, the ones with high Canaanite admixture are the Christians and Samaritans, but I'm not really in favor of a Canaanite mode of indigeneity, maybe Natufian Zionism is more like it?

[Steven Parker]

Both Palestinian Muslims and Diasporans have relatively low Levantine / Canaanite admixture, the ones with high Canaanite admixture are the Christians and Samaritans, but I'm not really in favor of a Canaanite mode of indigeneity, maybe Natufian Zionism is more like it?
Interesting point. I think the focus on Levantine or Canaanite ancestry misses the bigger picture. The discussion around Israeli claims is more about ancient Israelite ancestry, which is not the same as general Levantine ancestry. Even populations with high Levantine or Canaanite components do not necessarily reflect direct Israelite descent.

[Angry Moose]

All g25 “Italkim” samples are mixed Jews and only from Rome they included both Sephardi Jews and actual Italkim also an Ashkenazi sample made its way amongst them based off the leaked DNA of ancient Sicilian Jews the ones that appeared to be the most local and not from Africa or Anatolia generally resemble mostly Romaniotes, Cypriots and Syrian Jews more so then modern South Italians. This “Italkim” sample is mixed with Sephardic, Catalan, and Ashkenazi Jews so it’s not some type of pure Roman era South Italian Jew. Anyways the reason Ashkenazi now cluster more with South Italians is because they are roughly 20% Northern European and Western Ashkenazi are still around 10-12% Northern European. But their base non Northern European ancestry is more Romaniote/Cypriot like then South Italian like

[Angry Moose]

There is also another issue with the standard claims we see about the Rhineland hypothesis and that is the presumption that we have some kind of proof that medieval Rhineland Jews were direct immigrants from Italy while genetically it seems very plausible based off historical record, linguistics/onomastics, culture or really any field that doesn’t have to do with population genetics it is very hard to make an argument for Rhineland Jews being migrants from Italy. Then there is the issue of the Erfurt EU we know from historical records several Jews from Czechia and Silesia had settled in Erfurt and parts of Eastern Germany and up the Elbe river but their ultimate origins are a complete mystery and based off onamastic analysis it’s very hard to imagine they were offshoots of Rhineland Jews and not much to suggest Italian Jews either. So we’re gonna need to figure out what the deal is with Jews originating out of high medieval Czechia and neighboring lands to fully understand modern Ashkenazi

[Angry Moose]

But yeah please consider that the “Italkim” sample probably isn’t the best representative for medieval and ancient South Italian Jews because the actual breakdown of the average sample from Rome is likely something like this in terms of late medieval ancestry

1/8 Eastern Ashkenazi (the fully EAJ outlier)

1/8 Western Ashkenazi (German Jewish settlement in Italy late medieval and early modern)

1/4 Spanish and Portuguese Jews (large numbers settled across Italy and their surnames are prevalent amongst Italian rite Jews)

1/8 Catalan Jewish (in the 1800s about 15-20% of Rome’s Jews fell under this congregation)

3/16 Italkim from Central Italy and some of the North

3/16 Italkim including former Romaniotes (of Southern Italy) migrating North after Alhambra decree and further expulsions in kingdom of Naples

[gixajo]

I'm not sure I understand completely the thesis you defend. Do you argue that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from Jews who were previously settled in Italy during the Roman Empire? And that those who defend this base their argument solely on a random matter only observable in PCAs and on imprecise genetic modeling tools based on coordinates designed for PCAs?

If not...Could you explain it in a couple of simple sentences?

[Angry Moose]

No I’m not arguing this in fact I believe Ashkenazi most likely trace a substantial amount of ancestry to Roman era Italian Jews I’m only arguing that’s it’s very hard to make such a claim without being able to use genetics that’s my thesis and that the g25 “Italkim” aren’t gonna be representative of Roman era South Italian Jews. If you study the onamastics of medieval German Jews it mostly points to a French origin and there isn’t anything to suggest Italian origin you can read papers from Beider on this.

There are some arguments that Sephardi and Ashkenazi may derive significantly from the Roman era Jews in the Urban/Cosmopolitan cities and coastal areas of South France and Iberia but disproportionately intermarried with other imperial immigrant populations more then with native individuals imo this has plausibility to even if there is currently a higher Imperial Roman like mix then Iberian/Gallic when you consider potential selection preferences for marriage and the fact that most Jews were Greek speaking either primarily or as a second language. There was simply culture awareness and familiarity between Jews and the Greco-Roman world. I believe there are estimates for certain Roman cities in Southern Gaul being about half foreign in origin (mostly the imperial Roman like types) and you see similar in Roman cities in the Balkans. Roman Dalmatia was also nearly half Imperial Roman like in admixture and overlaps with modern Molise that is the main cluster there

tbh looking thru lists of Ashkenazi mtdna a lot more look plausibly Gallic or Iberian or have ancient matches with Hallstatt or La Tene cultures etc then Italian matches ancient or modern so I do consider both possibilities

ps sorry if I have a disorganized way of writing

[uMkhonto we Sizwe]

I'm honestly confused by your point, and why do you think there's a conspiracy going on around the origins of Ashkenazis, like why does southern Italy need to be stressed more?

[Angry Moose]

My point is or one of my points is it’s not very plausible Ashkenazi were direct migrants from Italy to Germany and even less likely from Southern Italy if anything they are at least migrated from within the Carolingian empire/early HRE

Southern Italy and more broadly also Central Italy (not that there was a major genetic difference in the Imperial period) Just also want acknowledge based off archaeological and epigraphic data Rome, it’s port towns and basically the greater region there most likely had the largest population of Jews in Italy in the Imperial era and is technically not a part of Southern Italy. the urban area around the Gulf of Naples is what likely followed next by second largest Jewish community. There is focus on Southern Italy because of the close genetic similarities between Jews and that region and because it was one of the original theories about Ashkenazi

Which type of conspiracy are you referring to?

[Angry Moose]

Of the main points of evidence for an Italian migration is this from Eleazar of Worms who was born in 1176 in Germany

“They all received the secret of the true version of the prayers, teacher from his teacher, up
to Abu Aaron, the son of Rabbi Samuel ha-Nasi, who came from Babylonia because of a
misadventure, and had to wander from place to place [as a punishment], until he came to
the country of Lombardy, to a city named Lucca, where he found Rabbi Moses [son of
Kalonymus], who wrote the piyyut, Eimat Norotekha, and he [Abu Aaron] transmitted to
him all his secrets. And he was Rabbi Moses, son of Kalonymus, son of Rabbi Judah. He was
the first who left Lombardy, he and his sons, Rabbi Kalonymus and Rabbi Jekuthiel, and his
relation Rabbi Ithiel, and other important persons; for the king Charles brought them with him
from the country of Lombardy, and settled them in Mainz, and there they multiplied and
flourished very much; until God's fury hit all the holy communities in the year 1096. And then
we were all lost, all perished, except very few who were left from our kinsmen. [Rabbi
Kalonymus] the Elder who transmitted [the Torah] to Rabbi Eleazar he-Ḥazzan of Speyer,
as we have written above, and Rabbi Eleazar he-Ḥazzan transmitted it to Rabbi Judah he-
Ḥasid, and from him I, the small one, received the secrets of the prayers and other secrets.”

He describes the migration of the Kalonymus family from the Kingdom of Lombardy and also states that other important persons were brought to so this may imply a small migration depending on what he mean by others it could be a few dozen or a few hundred