> This has indeed been attempted, with the MSY results interpreted plausibly to suggest an overwhelming majority of Near Eastern ancestry on the Ashkenazi male line of descent11,18,19,20,21, albeit with much higher levels (>50%) of European (potentially east European) lineages in Ashkenazi Levites22, suggesting a possible Khazar source in that particular case.
This part of the quote appears to indicate an overwhelming majority of Near Eastern ancestry, the remaining part of the quote is simply adding more details/context:
> the MSY results interpreted plausibly to suggest an overwhelming majority of Near Eastern ancestry on the Ashkenazi male line of descent
Do you see those citation links associated with the lines you quoted in the article?
Lets follow one[0] and see what publication it is referencing[1] so we can be sure we are correctly understanding this section.
Next lets look at the referenced article[1] to get some more context.
The article being referenced by the citation also clearly supports a Near East paternal lineage(in addition to European Ancestries) from the title alone:
> Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y Chromosome Evidence for Both Near Eastern and European Ancestries
So it's clearly the case that Ashkenazi Jews have Near Eastern ancestry in addition to European.
I do have a bit of a background myself in biology but research papers like this shouldn't be that hard to follow even if you don't.
This is the paper you linked to btw, just absolute mythical nonsense:
> Cohanim (plural of “Cohen,” the Hebrew word for priest) are, in Biblical tradition, the descendants of Aaron the brother of Moses; Levites are, in that tradition, considered to be those male descendants of Levi, the third son of the patriarch Jacob and paternal ancestor of Aaron, who are not Cohanim. The Cohanim have both rights and duties in religious law, as well as being subject to restrictions that do not apply to the other castes.
The evidence for a Khazar origin is apparently quite weak, it's likely any Khazar link would be relatively minor if it even exists.[0] I think the Khazar's are more from the western Eurasian steppe region as opposed to near east(middle east). The original article I think was mentioning the Khazar hypothesis more as an alternative potential explanation that others have proposed.
The genetic links to the middle east are fairly strong on the paternal line.[1]
Obviously a lot of this is ongoing research of population genetics so our understanding of some of the details may change overtime but from the looks of it the paternal line ties to the middle east are strong enough that one can be fairly confident that the Ashkenazi have at minimum at least a partial middle eastern origin.
> This is the paper you linked to btw, just absolute mythical nonsense
This appears to be describing some of the tribal background that could potentially be relevant to researchers. Especially for cross referencing historical documents.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews#Y-DNA_...