Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC)

Activities

• As of January 2025, many pages on AROC’s website feature a quote by former Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) spokesperson, Ghassan Kanafani. The PFLP is a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. 
• AROC operates the Arab Youth Organizing (AYO), the self-proclaimed “youth arm” of AROC, which organizes anti-Israel protests in high schools. As of January 2025, AYO’s Instagram profile picture portrays youth in front of a mural of, amongst others, PFLP members Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh.
  • Leila Khaled is a “prominent member of the PFLP,” responsible for hijacking multiple airplanes.
  • Rasmea Odeh, a PFLP operative, was convicted for immigration fraud after concealing her role in two terrorist bombings in Israel. 

• In August 2024, AROC co-signed an “Open Letter to Progressives” that argues for the “[reconsideration of] the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a partner in social justice work.”
• In May 2024, AROC was a “convening organization” of the People’s Conference for Palestine. The conference featured speakers affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. At the event. AROC executive director Lara Kiswani encouraged activists to “overcome Zionism.” She also claimed that “the only thing that can stop this is a flood,” in reference to Hamas’ name for its October 7, 2023 massacre of Israeli citizens as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. She continued: “this is what the resistance intended, that the flood would become floods throughout the entire region.”
• In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, AROC published a statement “hold[ing] the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence we’ve witnessed across historic Palestine…Recent events did not occur in a vacuum but as a result of unrelenting colonial aggression.” The statement further called “to boycott Israel. We call on institutions to divest from Israel. We call on the US government to sanction Israel and end the billions in military aid.”
• On October 7, 2023, as Hamas was carrying out its brutal massacre, AROC posted on Instagram that “Palestine is rising! Gaza is rising!”
• In March 2016, AROC held events in support of Rasmea Odeh, referring to her as a “Palestinian American icon.” 

Advocacy in Schools

• AROC maintains an agreement with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUD) to provide “cultural empowerment and leadership workshops and academic support and to ensure that cultural and linguistic needs are met at nine San Francisco high schools.”
• In December 2023, following reports of AROC entering schools to organize pro-Palestine student walkouts, SFUD claimed it “will investigate claims…[and] spend the next month determining whether the group broke district rules by encouraging students to skip class, engage in activism and promote anti-Israel messages during recent protests.” In response, AROC claimed, “AROC absolutely supported the students who decided to walk out…We are appalled by the racist attacks they have faced since speaking out against genocide.”
• In May 2024, AROC activists were escorted off the campuses of a San Francisco public high school following a “noisy anti-Israel walkout.” The protest included chants of ““When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? (Stand up! Fight back!).”
• In January 2024, AROC lobbied the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve a resolution for an extended Gaza ceasefire, which passed.
• On October 16, 2023, AROC called for a “Student Walkout for Palestine” as part of a broader “National Day of Action.” The stated aim was “to stop the genocide in Gaza and demand that local leaders protect Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and all students against racist attacks.”
• In 2020, AROC founded the Save Arab American Studies Coalition that aims “to defend the inclusion of Arab American Studies and Palestine in CA Ethnic Studies high school curriculum.”

BDS Activities

• In January 2025, AROC called to “hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, and end Western complicity by stopping all arms transfers to Israel.”
• In June 2024, AROC published a statement titled “Rise Up and Stop the U.S. Sponsored Genocide in Gaza.” According to AROC, “As Israel continues to drop American-made two ton bombs on refugee camps and traumatized civilians, we call on all people of conscience to stop this slaughter and end this country’s growing complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people…We, along with all people of conscience, demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire to the war on Gaza. This can only be accomplished when the U.S. government halts all Israeli military aid. We call on all states to boycott, divest and sanction the apartheid state of Israel.”
• In May 2024, AROC activists blocked the entrance to Chevron headquarters as it “supplies Israel with the bulk of its electric energy.” According to AROC activist Wassim Hage, “Chevron is a major stakeholder in the unfolding violence we are seeing in Palestine, massive shareholder and massive profits to be promised from the plunder of Gaza. And we are here to demand an end to the complicity of this corporation in that genocide.”
• In August 2014, AROC launched their “Block the Boat: End Israeli Apartheid” campaign by organizing with local union workers to refuse to unload the cargo of Zim, an Israeli-based cargo shipping company, docked in the Port of Oakland. The ship returned to sea the same day that it arrived, without unloading its cargo. AROC celebrated this event as “a massively successful BDS effort” in an article republished by the official Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) website.
  • In May 2021, following reports that ZIM-operated ships were planning to return to California’s San Francisco Bay Area, AROC began “tracking the ZIM shipping line, monitoring its schedules, and preparing to mobilize whenever it docks.”

Staff

•  Lara Kiswani is the Director of AROC.
  • Before joining AROC, Kiswani co-founded the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
    • SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers. 
  • Kiswani also serves as lecturer of Race & Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University.
  • In January 2025, Kiswani published an article titled, “The Fight for Palestine Is the Fight Against Fascism.” According to Kiswani, “we must be clear about who we’re up against and what strategies they are using. After 75 years of occupation and a year of military invasion, Zionism has made clear their strategy: complete annihilation of Palestine and its people. To do this, the Zionist system requires the support of other right-wing forces for monetary, political, and narrative power.”
  • In February 2024, Kiswani alleged that “public education [in the United States] is under attack by Zionist … forces.” [53:05]
  • In October 2023, Kiswani was a signatory on a statement calling to “Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!”
  • In a March 2021 interview, Kiswani stated that “We see the US and Israel as partners historically and contemporarily as settler-colonial projects. So, we take on campaigns that seek to make a dent in US imperialism by exposing this partnership and stripping away its power. If we understand Israel as a tool and partner to US imperialism, then we understand our struggle for Palestinian liberation as a struggle for everyone’s liberation.”
  • On November 25, 2014, while speaking on a panel at a BDS Caucus Event, Kiswani was filmed saying that “… bringing down Israel really will benefit everyone in the world, everyone in society, particularly the workers” and that “as long as you continue to be on that side [of Zionism] I’m going to continue to hate you” [0:18].
• Sharif Zakout is the Lead Organizer of AROC.
  • Before joining AROC, as a student at UC Santa Cruz, Zakout was a student organizer for the Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP), which is now Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
  • In January 2024, Zakout participated in a panel titled “Teach-In on Genocide” at an event of “Artists against Genocide.”
  • In 2014, Zakout starred in a rap video that calls to “Free Rasmea Odeh,” a PFLP operative who was convicted for immigration fraud after concealing her role in two terrorist bombings in Israel. In the video, which also features images of murals with inscriptions such as “Art of War,” Zakout claims that “weapons [are] tested in the Gaza Strip [and then] sold to our pigs and they copy it” [1:13]. Additionally, he describes Israel as a case of “white supremacist rule” [0:53].