Orthodox Jewish guest finds Free Palestine message on hotel TV in London

An Orthodox Jewish tourist staying in north London says he was met by a hotel television message reading “Hi, welcome, Free Palestine,” in an episode that has pushed Travelodge into a police report and an internal investigation over how the text appeared on a guest screen.

The guest identified in reporting as Sruly Fogel, 24, from New York, was staying at Travelodge Manor House in Finsbury Park on Wednesday, June 4, while in London for a friend’s wedding. Fogel said the message left him frightened, vulnerable, uncomfortable and unsafe. He also said a second visibly Jewish member of the five-person group, which was split across two rooms, found the same message in another room.

Fogel said the group stayed overnight despite feeling uneasy, and that one person remained awake through the night to watch over the others. The matter was reported to the Metropolitan Police under reference CAD 7921/03 June 2026, adding a criminal-justice dimension to what began as a hotel-room complaint and has since become a test of how public-facing hospitality systems respond when a guest says a screen has been turned into a hostile signal.

Shomrim, the Jewish community protection organisation in north and east London, said the episode carried “all the hallmarks of targeted antisemitism” and helped report it to police. Reporting from The Jewish Chronicle and LBC also said the guests alleged hostile treatment from a member of staff at reception, widening the focus from the television message itself to the conduct of the hotel’s front-line response.

Travelodge chief executive Jo Boydell said the company launched an immediate internal investigation and reported the incident to police. She also apologised to the customer and the wider Jewish community, saying there was no place in society for antisemitism. By June 9, Travelodge said checks at Manor House had found the message on only one television, in the specific guest’s room, rejecting suggestions that it had appeared on all hotel TVs. The company said its investigation was still ongoing and had not explained how the message appeared.

The incident landed against a wider backdrop of rising concern about antisemitic abuse in Britain. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents across the UK in 2025, its second-highest annual total on record, in a surge that followed the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Travelodge’s reported plan to introduce antisemitism training for staff points to the broader issue now facing hotel operators: not just whether a single screen was compromised, but how quickly a property can detect, contain and answer politically or religiously charged incidents before guests feel abandoned in their rooms.