There is no relation or connection between the Ashkenazi and the people of the Middle East. There was never a time in the history of the universe that the Ashkenazi had ever set foot anywhere in the Middle East until 1882 when these Europeans began to arrive in Palestine. What a wonderful fiction they were selling when they claimed that Palestine was theirs because they are the Hebrews! What would stop any other group of people from making this kind of ridiculous claim?