Quote Originally Posted by Hanibalas Lekteris View Post
Of course, it is not a huge jump, one has to consider the fact that while the AJ-SJ strongly clines towards Lebanon, it is still pulled towards Europe.
So admixture is obvious and absolutely undeniable, the problem really lies in quantifying the amount of admixture... And there must have been several sources (same thing for the West Asian DNA, some of it has to do with the Jews' exile in Mesopotamia since there is consistent IBD sharing with Iranians, Iraqis, Armenians, even Assyrians to some extent).
South Italian-like admixture is possible, very probable even...
Sicilians show practically no WHG as well, though there are some South Italians who ended up showing trivial but nonetheless real amounts of WHG.

You could go up to 40% maximum as far as admixture is concerned, but that would be a stretch.
The most realistic figure would be something around ~36% for Ashkenazim and ~32% for Sephardim with a margin of error of around ~5%.

But in the end, as I said, it all comes down to aDNA.
Even then, we'll be splitting hairs if what I suspect, that pre-exilic Judeans were intermediate between Cypriots and Lebanese Christians/Druze (since we must account for the long-standing influence of Eastern Mediterranean peoples in the region, from the Philistines to the Seleucids), turns out to be true.

Hopefully, this will not be the case, making it easier to solve this whole dilemma.
I don't think 50-55% is a stretch for Sicilian-Levantine/Caucasus. It might be pulled towards the Levant but as you mention, there is the Caucasian influence 'weighting' the admixture. Sicilians score as much WHG as AJs - some of both groups score non-trivial amounts - but if you're 50% Sicilian you're not 50% European, Sicilians also have heavy Anatolian/MENA admixture.

A half-Sicilian, quarter-Lebanese quarter-Iraqi Kurd would look pretty much like an AJ, I think. ~50% Sicilian/South Italian and that sort of area + ~25% Judaean + ~25% south Caucus/north Iraq (pre-Arabic Iraqi populations) is for me a satisfactory look at the core ancestral population of Western European Jews. I think it satisfies all genetic and historic criteria. On top of that we have SSA for both, but particularly the SJs, and later, minor, other-European admixture+mongoloid for AJs.