Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held a conference call with bloggers, where she received questions — including from ThinkProgress — about Israel’s raid of the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and activists bound for Gaza. Pelosi refused to speak directly about whether Israel’s blockade is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that the focus should instead be on solving Middle East peace through a two-state solution:

PELOSI: Well, first of all, this incident, as you mentioned, is very recent. There is very strong interest in getting the facts and a transparent and credible investigation is what people are calling for — that’s what the White House has mentioned, and that’s what I support as well. We have to have the facts on which to make a judgment about how we go forward. I don’t know — I appreciate what you’re saying that people are suffering from different physical challenges because of the blockade. I don’t know that. I know blockades have consequences. … But the fact is, this is a terribly regrettable situation. I regret the loss of life first and foremost, and again, call for a credible and transparent investigation about how this came to be. […]

TP QUESTION: Do you think the blockade of Gaza should be lifted because it’s causing undue suffering on the people in the region?

PELOSI: [...] I don’t want to go into a discussion of the blockade of Gaza. I hope that we can end that by having a resolution in terms of Middle East peace. That’s where we spend our time, not necessarily on one particular tactics of one country or the next, but on the bigger picture, which is we must have peace in the Middle East. It must respect both sides, it must have a two-state solution — and I emphasize the solution part of it, so that both sides feel respected and well-treated and safe as they go forward with the new peace agreement — and I hope that whatever actions are taken on both sides, it’s in furtherance of that peace.

Though Congress doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, Israel’s blockade of Gaza has received harsh condemnation from officials and organizations worldwide. Progressive pro-Israel organization J Street issued a statement strongly condemning the human toll of Israel’s blockade: “This shocking outcome of an effort to bring humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza is in part a consequence of the ongoing, counterproductive Israeli blockade of Gaza.” Both the EU and Russia called for the “immediate opening of crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and people to and from Gaza.” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said, “Had Israelis heeded to my call and to the call of the international community by lifting the blockade of Gaza, this tragic incident would not have happened.”

As Matt Duss noted in today’s Progress Report, “Though the ostensible reason for the Israeli and Egyptian-enforced siege on Gaza is to weaken the militant group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since ejecting its Fatah rivals in 2007, it has actually had the reverse effect.” CAP Senior Fellow Brian Katulis pointed out in a 2009 report, co-written Marc Lynch and Robert Adler, that the blockade “has hurt the Palestinian people while not substantially inhibiting Hamas. And simultaneously it allows Hamas to blame persistent shortages on the Israeli blockade.”

As I wrote yesterday, and as Ben Armbruster writes today, Israeli officials and their various American mouthpieces have been hard at work over the last couple weeks, and especially in the wake of yesterday’s disastrous attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, to deny that there is actually a humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza.

In a statement the day before the raid, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said flatly “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza… We will not allow the flotilla to enter Gaza, as this is an infringement of Israel’s sovereignty.” (This was, of course, a tacit admission that Israel still occupies Gaza, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment.)

Echoing Ayalon Fox News yesterday, Charles Krauthammer asked “What exactly is the humanitarian crisis that the flotilla was actually addressing? There is none. No one is starving in Gaza. The Gazans have been supplied with food and social services by the U.N. for 60 years in part with American tax money.”

Speaking from remarkably similar talking points, Newt Gingrich told Politico “The U.S., through the United Nations relief organization, has been funding food and shelter for the people of Gaza for 60 years now. There was no humanitarian crisis; this was a deliberate political effort on the part of people who want to try to undermine the survival of Israel.”

On a conference call today arranged by the pro-settlement Israel Project, Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev insisted that “The whole idea that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is overstated.”

In 2008, a coalition of eight British-based human rights organizations on released a scathing report “claiming that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip was at its worst point since Israel captured the territory in 1967″:

The report said that more than 1.1 million people, about 80 percent of Gaza’s residents, are now dependent on food aid, as opposed to 63 percent in 2006, unemployment is close to 40 percent and close to 70 percent of the 110,000 workers employed in the private sector have lost their jobs.

It also said that hospitals are suffering from power cuts of up to 12 hours a day, and the water and sewage systems were close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters of sewage pouring into the sea daily.

Al Jazeera’s Gregg Carlstrom recently wrote that “It’s true that Israel allows basic necessities — which Israeli officials often term ‘humanitarian aid’ — to enter the blockaded Gaza Strip. But it tightly controls both the type and quantity of goods allowed into the territory”:

Israel usually allows 81 items into Gaza, a list which is subject to revision on a near-daily basis. It is riddled with contradictions: Zaatar, a mix of dried spices, is allowed into the territory; coriander and cumin are not. Chick peas are allowed, while tahini was barred until March 2010.

“Luxury goods,” things like chocolate, are prohibited altogether. [...]

And those products allowed to enter Gaza are permitted only in modest quantities. In January 2007, Gaza received more than 10,000 truckloads of goods each month; by January 2009, that number was down to roughly 3,000.

A 2008 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) found that 70 per cent of Gaza’s population suffered from “food insecurity.” As Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reported last week, the Israeli authorities allow little meat and fresh produce into Gaza, leading to widespread malnutrition in the territory.

Medical goods, too, are in short supply. The World Health Organisation says dozens of basic medicines are unavailable in Gaza because of the blockade.

Carlstrom also notes that “Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ human rights chief, called the blockade devastating in an August 2009 report. Pillay said it constituted collective punishment, illegal under international law.”

Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast today that the Israeli officials in charge of the blockade “adhere to what they call a policy of ‘no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.’”

In other words, the embargo must be tight enough to keep the people of Gaza miserable, but not so tight that they starve.

…and not so tight that Israeli flacks can’t continue to deny that Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian crisis.

This weekend, tea party activists gathered in Arizona to express support for the state’s new immigration law, SB-1070, by launching a “buycott” campaign to support state businesses. Tony Venuti, publisher of AZ Tourist News, has spearheaded the “Arizona Buycott” webpage which lists the businesses which want their support of SB-1070 to be documented. The front page of the website features a video in which Venuti lays out his own immigration views. Venuti states that the criminals, or “bad hombres,” need to get their “butts out of town.” According Venuti, by “ID-ing” everyone, the “illegal criminals” will “disappear like cockroaches”:

Let me tell you something, there’s gonna be procession down into the border South when you see a lot of illegal criminals knowing they are going to be compelled to be ID’d or thrown in jail, you’re gonna see them disappear back south like a bunch of cockroaches. Trust me. The other ones that are here, we’re gonna have to deal with them and I don’t know how that’s going to be dealt with. We don’t need to worry about that now.

Watch it:

Today, the Arizona Republic reported that “the exodus of illegal and legal immigrants predicted by some as a result of Arizona’s tough new immigration law is expected to hurt a variety of businesses that directly and indirectly cater to immigrant populations.” If all of Arizona’s undocumented immigrants “disappeared,” the state could lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs.

Rather than worrying about the economic effects of the law itself, Tea Party Nation launched the separate “National Arizona BUYcott” campaign last month at the Winning Back America Conference, which was headlined by Liz Cheney, Fred Thompson, and Sarah Palin. Gina Loudon, the St. Louis tea party supporter who credits herself with coming up the buycott idea, has said “the goal is to render boycotts ineffective.”

Loudon has high hopes. The personal financing website, mint.com, has estimated that Arizona’s fragile tourism industry has already lost $6-10 million in cancellations since the bill was signed into law. Phoenix alone stands to lose as much as $90 million as a result of boycotts. Democratic Diva’s Donna Gratehouse attended the buycott rally in Arizona this weekend and found that none of the big companies listed on Loudon’s website were present at the pro-SB 1070 “buycott” at Tempe’s Diablo Stadium except for Tempe’s Xtreme Bean Coffee. Venuti’s website so far lists only 16 business — one of which is his own.

On Sunday, Israeli forces raided an aid flotilla trying to break a blockade of Gaza to deliver much-needed humanitarian supplies, killing nine activists, including four Turkish citizens. The incident has received “widespread condemnation” from the international community. Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called the raid a “bloody massacre by Israel.”

In a damage control effort, Israeli officials and their right-wing American supporters are now trying to deflect blame onto the activists, saying that there was no reason for them to be trying to breach the blockade to deliver supplies because there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza:

ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN: “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. … The flotilla is an attempt at violent propaganda against Israel, and Israel will not allow the violation of its sovereignty at sea, in the air, or on land.”

MICHAEL OREN, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: “Over one hundred trucks, every day, laden with food and medicine go into Gaza. There’s no shortage of food. There is no shortage of medicine.”

NEWT GINGRICH: “There was no humanitarian crisis; this was a deliberate political effort on the part of people who want to try to undermine the survival of Israel.”

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “What exactly is the humanitarian crisis that the flotilla was actually addressing? There is none. No one is starving in Gaza.”

“They can get plenty of humanitarian aid in Gaza,” said the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol. “If they want more aid, airlift in five million tons of nice goods and the Israelis will just take a look and make sure they’re not arms.” Watch the video:

A U.N. fact-finding mission described the Israeli blockade, which Israel claims is aimed at Hamas, as “collective punishment.” A U.N. official said last week that the formal economy in Gaza has “collapsed,” and 60 percent of households there were short on food. The Guardian notes that according to UN statistics, “around 70% of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water.”

Amnesty International reported recently on the plight of Gazans as a result of the blockade:

The blockade [has] continued to cut off almost 1.5 million Palestinians from the rest of the world, isolating them in Gaza’s cramped confines, and greatly limiting the import of essential goods and supplies. This gratuitous exacerbation of the privations already suffered by the inhabitants of Gaza seriously hampered their access to health care and education and destroyed industries and livelihoods.

A U.N. spokesperson last year called Gaza “a prison.” “Eighty percent of Gaza’s population are refugees and non-refugees who rely on the UN aid,” he said, adding, “What is happening in Gaza now surpasses the capacities of any humanitarian organization.”