Rabbi: Recently I was in Jerusalem and I stood there with my feet together, as we do in this most important prayer talking in a whisper, right near the wall, the Kotel we call it, some people call it the Wailing Wall.  This is part of the holy temple that was destroyed about two thousand years ago; there were actually two temples in the same spot.  From when I was five years old everyday when I would pray, three times a day, the prayer included something about Jerusalem.  After I have a meal I would say something about Jerusalem.  At my wedding, at the happiest moment, we would smash a glass, we crash it because it is a mourning about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.  It is just this pervasive thing.  And there I was standing in this special place, saying God we've have always hoped to you and here I am in this holy place near the temple, this three thousand year old place.

Imam: Considering such a holy place, we believe that many of the prophets have been there especially the Major Prophets, like Moses, and Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad.  So, to have so much conflict and so much pain and so much bloodshed and anguish there it saddens me greatly.  Not only does it sadden me, in terms of the situation currently, I personally think it is unacceptable.  I think that any reasonable human being would say that it is unacceptable.  All of the suffering, all of the bloodshed, all the hatred, all the enmity that's going on there.  I think that it is very important for us as people to take some responsibility to try and fix up and alleviate the situation.  To come to some sort of agreement about how they can live in that holiest of places.  The only way to get to peace, to get to an agreement, to get some sort of justice was to walk along that path by listening to the other side and thinking about what was important to me overall.

Rabbi: In a sense, in our relationship, we came to some agreement about some very important principles.  About violence being a terrible thing, about conflict needing to be minimized, about people who are not into conflict but being protected.  We agreed about those things, but there are other things we couldn't agree about in the history in exactly what happened all those thousands of years is something and what happened when and all that is something we couldn't reach an agreement about.  But we can be comfortable with being uncomfortable with that.  Recognising yes, my community feels certain things, your community feels certain things, I feel certain things, and you feel certain things.  They are not all the same but it doesn’t need to be, we can still work together in Australia as long as we have some common ground; which we were able to establish.  We don’t have to agree about everything.