“F*** you, you Israeli piece of s***, I hope you burn in hell,” was the message sent to Ayelet Michael-Gayego and her husband when they requested toilet paper for their hotel room in Sofia, Bulgaria, last week. Michael-Gayego spoke to The Jerusalem Post on Friday morning about the “frightening experience.”
“We love Bulgaria very much,” she said. “We don’t like huge hotels with many people; we are always looking for a boutique hotel.”
The Israeli couple found the Family Hotel Agoncev on booking.com and arrived last Monday. For most of the stay, the two didn’t see anyone at reception except one man on the first day who gave them the code to the hotel and their room.
“There was no hot water and the breakfast wasn’t good, but we didn’t complain,” she added. However, on Thursday morning, the day before they were set to leave, they ran out of toilet paper.
“When we went to breakfast, we said there was no toilet paper, and they said they would sort it. We then left for the whole day, and when we came back that evening, there was still no toilet paper. There was no one at reception, but they had left a phone number, so we called and called and called. My husband sent a message.”
The next day, the couple left the hotel. On returning to Israel, Michael-Gayego’s husband saw the WhatsApp response: “F*** you, you Israeli piece of s***. I hope you burn in hell. You don’t need toilet paper, you are the most disgusting animals on the planet.”
“We were overwhelmed,” she told the Post. “We try to keep a low profile. My husband wears a yarmulke, but we speak English.”
She added that she is still shocked by the “violent” nature of the messages: “Not because we are Jews but because we are Israelis.”
'Not because we are Jews, because we are Israeli'
Since the incident, she and her husband have contacted booking.com – “We don’t want to give money to these kinds of people” – but have had no response. They also contacted the Bulgarian embassy in Israel and the Sofia police but have not heard from either.
Michael-Gayego then wrote a post in an Israeli Facebook group warning others about the hotel, and received a call from the Israeli ambassador to Bulgaria, who said he was shocked by the incident and would do everything he could to put this hotel out of booking.
“I felt it was important to let Israeli people know [about the hotel] because Israeli people love small hotels,” Michael-Gayego told the Post. “We felt bullied; it was frightening.”