We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇵🇸 🇮🇱 🇮🇷 Waiting for war in Haifa | Gidon Ben-Zvi
👤 Gidon Ben-Zvi contributes to The Algemeiner, The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, CiF Watch and blogs at Jerusalem State of Mind.
🔶️ "Israelis sitting in front of their television screens can’t help but notice that the Home Front Command’s list of areas where red alert alarms are going off is increasing daily. And with Hezbollah’s theater of operations expanding, Israel is effectively shrinking. As a result, residents of Haifa—Israel’s third largest city, with a population of close to 300,000—believe that it’s only a matter of time before they are ordered to evacuate their homes."
🔶️ "Haifa is now next in line to be attacked by Hezbollah. It lives a life in limbo. We continue to work. Our children go to school. But the red alerts are multiplying. My cousin in the northern coastal city of Nahariya—about a 30-minute drive from Haifa—now regularly hears bombs overhead, forcing her and her family to run to their home’s safe room. My wife and her workplace colleagues in Acre—25 minutes by car from where we live—are constantly hearing sirens. Virtually every afternoon, my kids come home from school with updates about another classmate whose father has been called up for a second tour of reserve duty, this time in the north."
🔶️ "We have entered a period of threat and waiting. What the people of the north are experiencing today is not unlike the hamtanah the “Waiting Period” before the 1967 Six-Day War. During the three weeks of the hamtanah, Arab nations were poised to annihilate Israel. Jerusalem mobilized the IDF reserves. In this tension-filled time, Israeli morale plummeted, catalyzing a political crisis that led to the formation of Israel’s first unity government."
🔶️ "Based on Hezbollah’s modus operandi, anything short of a rapid reestablishment of the preemption doctrine could well lead to Israel having to abandon the Galilee and other parts of the north. At this rate, people will soon be talking about a Kfar Saba envelope in addition to the one around Gaza. It would be a damned shame to have to leave it all behind."
🇺🇸 #Oklahoma high school principal (Kirk Moore) seen charging at and disarming a school shooter.
The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Victor Hawkins, was a former student who said he wanted to shoot up the school “like the Columbine shooters did.” While taking down the shooter, Moore was shot in the leg. He is expected to recover.
When the Principal woke up that day, he never thought he would be tackling a gunman.
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🇨🇳🛢 How much strategic oil does the world actually have in reserve?
Global strategic crude oil inventories stood at ~2.5 BILLION barrels as of December 2025, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
China holds by far the largest stockpile at 1,397 million barrels, more than 3 times the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve of 413 million barrels, which itself sits at only 58% of its full storage capacity of 714 million barrels.
China added an average of 1.1 million barrels per day to its strategic inventories throughout 2025, with preliminary data suggesting it continued building stockpiles in early 2026 ahead of the Iran War.
Japan holds the 3rd-largest reserve at 263 million barrels, followed by OECD European countries at 179 million barrels.
Meanwhile, the US is releasing 172 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to suppress oil prices, part of a broader 400 million barrel coordinated release agreed by 32 IEA member nations in March.
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🛢 JP Morgan Warns Oil Market Out of Balance, Prices Must Rise
🔸The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows, has removed 13.7 million barrels per day from global supply in April alone. A JP Morgan research note warns the market has no good way to replace it.
🔸Normally, spare production capacity in Saudi Arabia and the UAE acts as the market’s shock absorber. But that buffer has effectively been removed, eliminating the system’s first line of defense.
🔸With spare capacity unavailable, markets turned to inventories
➤ Global stockpiles are now being drained at ~7.1 mbd in April, an extraordinary pace, according to the note.
🔸Meanwhile, demand is collapsing because supply simply isn’t reaching users — “forced demand destruction.”The hardest hit sectors include:
▪️ Petrochemical plants across Asia are shutting down or slashing output as LPG, ethane, and naphtha flows from the Gulf collapse
▪️ Airline jet fuel ...
🛢⛽️ Global oil inventories are heading toward RECORD LOWS:
Global visible oil inventories have fallen -255 million barrels since the start of the conflict on February 27, to 7,864 million barrels.
Total estimated oil draws, including non-OECD refined products storage, have accelerated to 10.9 million barrels per day in April, the largest monthly draws on record since 2017.
Cumulative estimated draws since the start of the war now stand at 474 million barrels, with Hormuz flows holding at ~10% of normal, or 2.0 million barrels per day.
Meanwhile, even in an optimistic scenario where Strait of Hormuz flows begin recovering by late April, it is unlikely to prevent global visible inventories from reaching all-time lows, according to Goldman Sachs.
As inventories keep falling, physical oil markets are likely to require sharply higher prices for immediate delivery, since buyers cannot wait months for cheaper futures delivery when stocks are running critically low.
Goldman also warns...
