In view of the news about Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu appearing to side with the US about stopping building work in some of some of the disputed land, and I forgot to do my one hour prayer slot at work on tuesday, I decided to go prayer walking around the government buildings. I live not far from there but today I thought about taking a different route and went via a main road past one of the museums, after a mile or so I saw some very attractive gardens with neatly trimmed hedges next to the stone perimeter walls of the Knesset and there is a smell of lavender from the bushes, a glimpse of the days of Solomon in some ways. There was a road turning off here directly to the Knesset buildings themselves and approaching some booths with a barrier across the road, seeing a park on the left hand side I was not familiar with I ventured into there. Although its dark and not easy to see, I suddenly saw a family in a tent there, or to be more exact two or three tents with a large canvas over all of them, and a man and his two sons sitting outside. There were various cardboard signs in Hebrew and some in broken English they had been thrown out of their house by the government. I asked the man if he knew English, he called for his son who got his friend from another tent close by who looked about 15. This boy was telling me they had been living here for 2 months as their house was seized without saying any reason why. They didn’t say much why this was, I think they were living before in Jerusalem and not in any of the parts of the West Bank or in East Jerusalem. I asked if maybe I could get someone to interview them as this might made a good story for our magazine, the man said he would be ok with this. I went away sad for them, a little confused of why this community of people were living in a park. I told them Christians would be praying for them.

I went and finished my praying for Mr Netanyahu and the government and headed off back home.

Around the government building and in the hedges I have seen some spools of cassette tape wrapped around trees, I have seen this a fair bit back in Portsmouth, but there’s quite a bit of it around this city, I have been told its some kind of occultic practice, I don’t know who does it, but I always make a point of praying over it and breaking it.