Chuck Schumer: "Too many people are turning against Israel because of their dislike for Netanyahu."

UNITED STATES: PM Netanyahu criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's watershed speech calling for elections in Israel, saying it was "totally inappropriate" on CNN's State of the Union. "Israelis understand if we were to have elections now, before the war is resoundingly won, we would have at least six months of national paralysis, which means we would lose the war," he claimed.

• Schumer said that "too many people are turning against Israel because of their dislike for Netanyahu…I felt an imperative to show that you could be against Netanyahu and still be very pro-Israel, which of course I am."
  
  
• Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, one of the key pro-Israel voices in the House, told CNN that "the fact that Israel's most staunch defender in the U.S. Congress should be making these remarks should be an earthquake in Israel." Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Schumer's speech was "an act of courage, an act of love to Israel."

■ ISRAEL: PM Netanyahu said during a government meeting that some in the international community "are trying to stop the war now, before achieving all of its goals…by making false accusations against the IDF, against the Israeli government and against the prime minister of Israel." Israel, according to Netanyahu, "must not give in to this pressure."

• Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said military pressure in Gaza "is the key" to both a military victory in Gaza for the return of the hostages, "through operational means or through negotiations."
  
  
• Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded that PM Netanyahu stop the next round of appointments in the IDF, claiming that Chief of General Staff Herzl Halevi does not have a mandate to promote officers following October 7.