From the JRMiP homepage:
‘3.3 million Jews can change the life of 40 million Poles’
The founding wish of the JRMiP is to write new pages into a history that never quite took the course we wanted. We call for the return of 3.300.000 Jews to Poland to symbolize the possibility of our collective imagination – to right the wrongs history has imposed and to reclaim the promise of a utopian future that all citizens deserve. Our destiny is not tied to the fate of Jews – or Poles – we welcome into our ranks all those who believe in the strength of dreams and political will to achieve more. Members of the movement are migrants, intellectuals, workers, artists, out-casts and thinkers: People who recognize that the Europe of today needs to be re-thought, that Israel must change to be part of the Middle East and that as citizens we have the ability and responsibility to imagine the world differently. Now, the movement needs you. Together, we can be strong in our weakness.
In the words of the JRMiP manifesto: ‘This is the response we propose for these times of crisis, when faith has been exhausted and old utopias have failed. Optimism is dying out. The promised paradise has been privatized. The Kibbutz apples and water melons are no longer as ripe. We direct our appeal not only to Jews. We accept into our ranks all those for whom there is no place in their homelands – the expelled and the persecuted. There will be no discrimination in our movement. We shall not ask about your life stories, check your residence cards or question your refugee status.’
The desire seems to be that if Jews of Polish ancestry would return to a country that always treated them as second-class citizens, then the remaining (mostly Sephardic) Jews in Israel could melt into a Middle East and return to becoming second-class citizens as well.
Join us and Europe will be stunned.
The JRMiP was initiated by Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana in 2007 and since then has garnered international recognition and support. In May 2012 the JRMiP will meet for the first time in Berlin to formulate their future agenda.
This is considered "utopian."
The heralded JRMiP Congress was apparently held three weekends ago - yes, on Shabbat - and perhaps three dozen "delegates" were scheduled to attend.
I can find no news stories about it.
In fact, the entire idea may have been a publicity stunt for the Israeli artist Yael Bartana, who created a trilogy of films about a fictional JRMiP in faux documentary style.
However tenuous the idea's relationship is with reality, Israeli Arab newspaper Elaph loves the idea. What's not for Arabs to love? It pushes their idea that Jews properly belong elsewhere.
The script could have been written by Helen Thomas!
UPDATE: Simon points me to a Forward review of the film trilogy that makes it clear that the entire idea is a hoax, but a hoax for the sake of art, so instead of calling it a hoax it is an invitation to have the audience join in the irony. The trilogy equates Israel with the Nazis, but subtly, thus elevating it from hateful rhetoric to a wonderful example of post-Zionist art, according to the Forward.