A good night’s sleep. Not guaranteed

Nobody checks into a £60-a-night hotel expecting a pillow menu and Egyptian cotton sheets. All you’re after is a decent sized room, ideally not sandwiched between two stag dos, clean sheets, a lump-free mattress, a window that opens, three anti-theft clothes hangers, a mini kettle and at least one Nescafé sachet.

Simply put, somewhere to get a decent night’s sleep.

What you have every right not to expect in your home away from home is a pointed political message waiting on your television, personally addressed to Mr Ferrer in room 1401.

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Yet that is apparently what happened to two visibly Orthodox Jewish guests at a Finsbury Park Travelodge in north London this week. Both arrived to find “Free Palestine” displayed on their TV screens. Travelodge has apologised, launched an investigation and reported the matter to police.

“Free Palestine” is not an antisemitic slogan. People who have never harboured an anti-Jewish thought in their lives chant it at demonstrations. But context matters. And few contexts are more personal than your hotel room.

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That’s what so many people still fail to grasp about the experience of British Jews since 7 October. It is not one great dramatic act (although, tragically, we’ve had a fair few of those, too). It’s the little fires everywhere. It’s the death by a thousand cuts.

Context matters. And few contexts are more personal than your hotel room

It’s the Star of David nervously tucked beneath a shirt. It’s the Hebrew conversation lowered to a whisper the bus. It’s the schoolboy warned not to wear his kippah in public. It’s Jewish students wondering whether a university education is worth the aggravation. It’s a British family quietly and painfully deciding another country offers a safer future.

Take a single incident and there’s always an explanation. But stack them end to end and the pattern is impossible to ignore. Almost three years after 7 October, the genie is so far out of the bottle that politicians still talking about putting it back sound utterly detached from reality.

This country remains among the most tolerant in the world. Yet a significant minority, drawn largely from radical elements of the Muslim community and the hard left, has become considerably more emboldened. They have found the courage of their contempt. Beliefs and behaviours that once remained behind closed doors have escaped into the open. Restraints and inhibitions that prevented people from acting on their darkest instincts have fallen away.

Most depressing about the Travelodge incident was not the message itself, but what it did to the young man who received it. He told Jewish News that he is unwilling to return to London. He had arrived in a country noted for its decency and left it knowing his Jewish identity had made him a target.

Being Jewish in Britain is becoming harder, riskier and more exhausting by the day. That this is not yet an unambiguous national scandal is itself a scandal. Australia has already recognised as much, establishing a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Britain urgently needs one, too. Without it, there is little hope of it returning to the more civilised country it was before 7 October 2023.

Until then, try to sleep tight.