Don't take it.
A barrister has reported himself to the Bar Standards Board for reacting rudely to provocative tweets.
Francis Hoar overstepped the mark while engaged in a heated exchange with fellow X debater Juwayriyyah Alam.
The pair were arguing about West Midland Police's decision to ban supporters of Tel Aviv Maccabi football club from coming to Birmingham to watch their team play Aston Villa.
West Midlands Police claimed that Maccabee fans had thrown Muslims into a river at a previous fixture in Amsterdam, but Dutch police later said that was untrue.
This week the force’s chief admitted it had used AI to compile evidence for MPs, and that Microsoft CoPilot had hallucinated a match between the Israeli club and West Ham United.
Commenting on the shambles, Hoar posted that “The Chief Constable must resign and, if he doesn’t, the Home Secretary should sack him”.
Alam responded, “It's funny - every single individual who has called for the West Midlands Police chief to resign is an staunch supporter of Israel and it's [sic] genocide”.
Hoar replied, “Not every single one of its supporters are lying supporters of genocidal Hamas and the violent thugs that beat up Jews in Amsterdam and Birmingham. But you and most of them are.”
Alam agreed, telling Hoar, “You mean when the tel aviv fans got fafo'd [‘f***ed around and found out’]? Yes I clapped.”
Having reached some kind of agreement, Hoar left it at that and went to have a cup of tea replied, “Go and fuck yourself”, adding in a further reply, “Ugly whore”.
Hoar deleted the offensive messages, but it was too late: Alam circulated a screenshot of his intemperate remarks and said she would be reporting him to the BSB. Her post has been viewed over a hundred thousand times and has elicited dozens of excited comments pointing out how the pot was calling the kettle black.
Hoar told RollOnFriday, "Last Thursday evening, an anonymous X user engaged with a public post of mine on X calling for Craig Guildford to be sacked as Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police because of hiding information about banning Maccabi fans from Birmingham".
"After an initial response from me about the violence to which Jewish fans were subjected in Amsterdam in 2024, the X user stated that she 'clapped' when they were 'fafo'd', which I knew meant 'fuck around, find out': ie I understood that she was celebrating Jews being thrown into canals by violent thugs."
"That disgusting statement shocked me, and I momentarily responded to this post with language that I immediately regretted. I deleted these comments within seconds. I have referred myself to the Bar Standards Board and will have no further public comment."
Hoar's not the only barrister going viral this week - another one had a traumatising experience courtesy of railway staff.
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Comments
50
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A Hoare calling somebody a whore is gold.
22
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Too much time on their hands.
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He was on the right side in the underlying dispute.
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What's the problem and why would you report yourself?
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To be fair, I think it a very measured response to someone celebrating an attack on jews.
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"To be fair, I think it a very measured response to someone celebrating an attack on jews."
How disingenuous.
Their Jewishness is incidental, as you well know. They’re just football hooligans, with a known track record of hooliganism and disorderly and racist conduct.
You presumably aren’t aware that, at the end of 2025, even Tel Aviv’s police banned the Tel Aviv derby between Maccabi and Hapoel Tel Aviv.
Why? For what the Israeli police called “public disorder and violent riots”.
Presumably now Britain’s political and media elite think Tel Aviv’s police are antisemites now, lol.
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Remember when the Gazans got FAFO'd? Yes I clapped.
Oh no wait, that kind of thing is only cool when you're celebrating violence being inflicted on Jews. My mistake, please let me back into Woke Club. Be kind!
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Quite right - the comment had nothing to do with the underlying argument, just an easy, misogynistic and baseless insult
15
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It takes a Hoare to know one.
Anyway, do these people have nothing better to do.
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Isn't it odd how the LinkedIn experts on Middle Eastern affairs have so little to say about Iran.
Daily updates and emotional wailing about every last tiny detail in Gaza. But suddenly zero interest in "human rights" now the story is in Iran.
Dead Iranian Muslims don't seem to matter so much to them as Gazan ones.
Weird.
14
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Would be so much more amusing if his name was Nicolas (say it fast).
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11:18
How disingenuous. You wouldn't care about supposed football hooligans coming here if they weren't Israeli.
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Francis KC is hardly an oil painting himself, is he now?
😬
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Might that be the same Francis Hoar who is a director of British Friends of Israel, then?
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/I9WdjkcU37W7aJ0GRE2aLXEMfLk/appointments
BFIL haven't registered under the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, so perhaps a timely reminder from the Home Office might be in order.
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12:09 - last time I checked, the UK wasn't sending arms to Iran.
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Nobody should care if they are Jewish or Israeli or whatever. Maccabi fans have been banned from matches in their own country - which shows it's not about being Jewish at all.
Having said that, Israel doesn't sanction settlers who burn Palestinians in the West Bank out of their homes and arrests the victims who protest, so maybe it's not the best judge of who to ban...
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" She was a HOOO-WAAAAH." Ralph.