Hello from CNN, I'm Joe Beck, with the five things you need to know for Friday, December 15th.

The White House is putting more pressure on Israel to kill less civilians in Gaza. National security advisor Jake Sullivan

will travel to the West Bank today and while he's been showing that Israel still

has US support for its war against Hamas he's also been urging the Israeli government to do more to protect

civilians.

There will be a transition to another phase of this war, one that is focused in more precise

ways on targeting the leadership and on intelligence-driven operations.

This comes as a rift between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be getting wider.

Yesterday, Biden was critical of Israel's attacks on Gaza.

I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives, not stop going after Hamas but be more careful. The Hamas

controlled health ministry in Gaza says more than 18,000 people have been

killed there in less than three months.

Biden and Netanyahu also have different opinions on whether the Palestinian authority

should be allowed to govern in Gaza once the war ends, with Netanyahu repeatedly rejecting the idea.

The conflict in the Middle East continues to fuel hate in the US,

with attacks targeting Jews, Arabs, and Muslims seeing an increase.

In Georgia, a middle school teacher has been arrested after multiple witnesses say he

threatened to behead a 13-year-old Muslim student. The girl had told the teacher the

Israeli flag hanging in his classroom offended her. An incident report shows he's facing

charges of making terroristic threats and cruelty to children in the third degree.

And while anti-Semitism has been on the rise since the conflict erupted,

we're learning more about an alleged mass shooting plot from before that in September.

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