Michael Berenstein

Reader of Fantasy | Lover of Music & Sports | Devoted Husband and Father | Chiropractor

[CIJA @CIJAinfo]

Following confirmation that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is breaking its commitment of elections in 2026, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) released the following statement calling on the Government of Canada to take concrete measures to hold the PA accountable:

“Just over a year ago, Prime Minister Carney recognized Palestinian statehood on the basis of commitments made by the Palestinian Authority, including holding general elections in 2026 and undertaking 'much-needed reforms.'

“Today, the PA has confirmed it has broken its commitment to hold elections in 2026. The PA has also failed to enact reforms, including ending payments to terrorists and the families of those who murdered innocent civilians.

“While Israel faces punitive measures from the Canadian government, the Palestinian Authority has yet to face accountability for failing to deliver on its commitments. This is a dangerous double standard that has implications for both the region and here in Canada where security experts warn that criticism of Israel has been exploited to fuel antisemitism, violence and even acts of terror.

“Prime Minister Carney has said Canadian foreign policy is guided by 'taking the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,' and by the pursuit of influence.

“But influence must be measured by results. If recognizing Palestinian statehood has not secured even the commitments on which that recognition was predicated, Canadians deserve to know what Canada's approach is achieving. Canadians need to know what concrete steps their government will now take to hold the PA accountable and ensure its policies produce meaningful progress toward peace."

[Michael Berenstein @BerensteinDC]

If you read only one short article about the historical, awful significance of October 7, make it this article by Warren Kinsella.

[Toronto Sun @TheTorontoSun]

KINSELLA: Never too late to take back the narrative of October 7, 2023 https://t.co/Tlh8TpEJQd

[Ben Mulroney @BenMulroney]

Cc: @MarkJCarney @AnitaAnandMP @CanadianForeign

[Terry Newman @terrynewman]

Here's what a PM who cared about threats to the Jewish community in Canada would do right now to change course.

A huge step toward alleviating the threat and hatred directed at Jewish communities in Canada could be accomplished if the PM was honest about these two things.

1. There is no genocide in Gaza.

Its population has actually increased. The IDF is fighting plain-clothed terrorists. The numbers given by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (which ran a pay-to-slay program) can’t be trusted.

2. Anti-Zionism is a front for antisemitism.

The government’s new report states that anti-Zionism can be antisemitism, yet our PM — who has told us Canada has failed its compact with Jewish Canadians — hasn’t told Canadians this himself.

Our PM could also add that it is disgusting that campuses across Canada have indoctrinated students, many of whom are the same age as those murdered at the Nova music festival, into believing the inverted narrative that October 7 — an attack that Hamas, and many Palestinians who support Hamas, would likely have loved to see amount to a genocide — was a day on which Israel committed genocide.

It's that easy.

[Mike Fegelman @MikeFegelman]

.@CBC’s handling of Neil Herland looks like an institutional version of DARVO.

DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It is a manipulation tactic used to avoid accountability.

It is also a tactic that is repeatedly identified in pro-Palestinian activism: deny or minimize the underlying conduct, attack those who call it out, and recast the people accused of intimidation as the victims.

Herland did not invent the incident. He witnessed it. Protesters shouted “Zionist alert,” “baby killer” and “you’re going to hell” at people entering a religious service. He recorded what happened and described what it meant to experience that as a Jewish Canadian.

Then the inversion began.

Was it really a synagogue?

Was the building public?

Was the guest speaker controversial?

Was Herland too personally connected?

Every additional question moves attention one step farther away from the people confronting Jews on their way into Yom Kippur services and one step closer to making the Jewish witness responsible for the controversy.

That is exactly why Michael Geist’s analysis matters.

He strips away the excuses and brings the story back to its most basic facts: people were attending a religious service, protesters were confronting them as they entered, and Canadian law protects religious gatherings from wilful disturbance.

That is what CBC should be examining.

Instead, according to reporting, the journalist who documented the incident was pulled off-air and subjected to disciplinary proceedings.

There is something deeply revealing about that instinct.

When antisemitism occurs, too many institutions seem more comfortable interrogating the Jew who describes it than confronting the people responsible for the conduct itself.

The behaviour gets “context.”

The aggressors get explanations.

The Jewish witness gets scrutiny.

That is how responsibility gets reversed.

Geist deserves real credit for refusing to let CBC hide behind that inversion.

Neil Herland is not the problem CBC should be investigating.

The much more uncomfortable question is why the broadcaster apparently found his documentation of antisemitic intimidation more institutionally troubling than the intimidation itself.

https://t.co/6OzOb9ssAw

[Israel Defense Forces @IDF]

❗️ CHILDREN IN GAZA EXPLOITED: Footage shows a terrorist using a child to transfer weapons into a civilian home in central Gaza, using him as a human shield to transfer the weapons, in an attempt to prevent the IDF from striking & thwarting their transfer.

Upon identifying the presence of a child, the IDF refrained from carrying out any strikes against the terrorist.

[Ben Shapiro @benshapiro]

The genocide charge against Israel is a lie. It always has been. But there’s a purpose to the lie – and a reason that the Left dictates that its leaders repeat it, over and over again.

[Michael Berenstein @BerensteinDC]

RT @CIJAinfo: Double standards and one-sided punitive actions against Israel don’t happen in a neutral environment.
As we saw in Belleville…

[Warren Kinsella @kinsellawarren]

If you try to block access to a synagogue, you are just like the Nazis.

[Dan Senor @dansenor]

Asked…and answered. Listen to all of it, folks. Especially the absurdity of celebrities being regarded as brave for ‘speaking truth’ (IE parroting conventional tropes and canards).

[Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer]

No one could ever imagine Morocco, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates would be more friendly to Israel than UK, Canada & Australia. But Muslim countries that fight Islamists increasingly embrace Israel, while Western governments that court Islamist voters increasingly condemn it.

[Dan Senor @dansenor]

EVERY WORD HERE FROM RABBI DAVID INGBER:
“Many of us believed the liberal world understood the difference between condemning an Israeli government and condemning Israel; between opposing occupation and opposing Jewish sovereignty; between demanding Palestinian dignity and treating Jewish self-determination as a crime. But the creep was unstoppable: Criticism of what Israel does moved to condemnation of what Israel is, until Israel itself became the crime, Zionism its name. The disparagement moved: from Israel to Zionism, from Zionism to Zionists, from Zionists to institutions, from institutions to people. Israeli. Zionist. Hillel. Synagogue. Rabbi. Student. Jew."

[Bill Maher @billmaher]

The prevailing view of so much of the young left in America is that we’re the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can’t be all bad.

[Iñigo San Millán @doctorinigo]

A study with almost 74,000 subjects ages 50-85.

Conclusion:
-The wealthiest Americans had approximately the same survival rates as the poorest people in Europe.

Wealth helps enormously within the United States, but even high wealth does not completely overcome the US–European mortality disadvantage.

Wealthy Americans presumably have much greater ability to buy excellent medical care, better housing, healthier food, gyms, preventive testing and so forth. Yet their survival remained roughly comparable to the poorest group in Northern/Western Europe.

The study doesn’t provide direct answers to why this happens. However, maybe wealth cannot outperform lifestyle, strong social safety net, great food around friends and family, lower stress, walking significantly more everyday to your bakery (yes, believe it or not, Europeans are big on bread), local food stores, coffee shops, affording to retire when it is time without worrying about paying bills especially when you get sick…

As both an American and European citizen, I believe it may be time for Americans to recalibrate how we think about longevity.

We are increasingly chasing the latest intervention such as rapamycin, peptides, cold plunges, red-light therapy…hoping that targeting a single enzyme or metabolic pathway will move the needle.

As a systems physiologist, I struggle with that view. Human physiology is not a collection of isolated pathways. Trillions of cells communicate across metabolic, vascular, endocrine, immune and neurological systems. Health emerges from their integration.

Perhaps longevity is less about hacking individual pathways and more about creating the environment in which the whole organism can thrive.

[Alan Couzens @Alan_Couzens]

"True discipline is built on a foundation of good State" 👏👏

It's not the discipline to do the workout.

It's the discipline to live a stable, consistent, athletic life in the 20 hours away from the workout.

*This* discipline is what makes champions.

[Michael Berenstein @BerensteinDC]

@hjluks @Alan_Couzens ... But first they're in my office for all sorts of complaints.

[Howard Luks MD @hjluks]

We’ve become so good at making life easier that we sometimes forget what happens when the body never has to work.

If we consistently ask our bodies to do very little, they eventually become prepared to do very little.

This issue explains so much of the aches and pains we see in the office... most folks don't need scans... they need to move more.

[Toronto Raptors @Raptors]

#7 FOREVER

[Howard Luks MD @hjluks]

Enough.

(Yes, we have a very active bubble here who will push back- go for it... But there are millions who are silent, reading this, and feel inadequate, who need to see this)

You walked this morning. Enough.

You didn’t hit ten thousand steps. You hit seven, and you took the stairs twice because the elevator felt too easy. Enough.

You lift twice a week. Not five times. Not with a coach filming your bar speed. Twice, with intent, and you add a little weight when the old weight stops being hard. Enough.

You don’t track your HRV. You notice when you’re flat, and you go easy that day. Enough.

You take vitamin D and creatine. The other eleven bottles stay on the influencer’s shelf, where the evidence left them. Enough.

You don’t own a cold plunge, a red-light panel, or a ring that scores your sleep. You go to bed at a reasonable hour in a cool, dark room, and most mornings you wake up feeling like yourself. Enough.

Most of your easy efforts are actually easy. Once in a while, you go hard enough that talking gets difficult. Enough.

You can carry the groceries up two flights and still finish the sentence you started. Enough.

There’s a second way to interpret this word, and it has nothing to do with measurement. It’s the one you say to the noise that is social media advice.

The post telling you you’re already behind. The protocol that replaced last month’s protocol. The man half your age is explaining what your hormones are doing. The feeling, manufactured and sold to you on purpose, that whatever you’re doing for your body, it isn’t sufficient and never will be.
ENOUGH.

You are allowed to do the few things that work, do them for decades, and stop apologizing for the things you skipped. The fundamentals are not a lesser version of health. They are healthy. Everything else is garnish.

Enough isn’t a white flag. It’s the line. Learn to say it both ways... "this is sufficient", and that’s quite enough now — and then… most of the anxiety this industry runs on has nowhere left to stand.

[Alex @ajak1033]

The Spurs know how to TAKE the lead, they just don't know how to HOLD the lead. And that's really the most important part of the lead: the holding