The new book by Yishai Sarid, "The Third," begins and ends with catastrophes. It starts with two bombs that obliterate Tel Aviv and Haifa and a regional war in the Middle East that the Jews win, after which they re-establish the temple. It ends with complete destruction: Twenty-five years after that, on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), the “Amalek” enemy, a code name in the book for the Arab world, has already conquered most of Israel and nearly reaches Jerusalem. “The Temple Mount court was a bloodbath and the shelling continued mercilessly … bodies piled up everywhere … rockets fell in the court … and then a terrible sound was heard, louder than all the noises that preceded it … soldiers jumped from the walls and turned into fiery torches,” Sarid wrote.

The military disaster arrives alongside a moral disaster. At that very moment, the High Priest and the Jewish people are one step away from sacrificing a human being at the temple.

Among other factors, behind the current wave of terrorism lies the Arabs' fear of a change in the status quo on the Temple Mount, and this feeling is not totally disconnected from reality. In the Peace Index survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute on Oct. 28-29, 38% of Jewish people surveyed expressed support for allowing Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, which is currently forbidden. Another survey, conducted in 2013 by the Etgar Mochot Institute for the Joint Committee of Temple Mount Organizations, found that one-third of the Jewish public — of whom 31% were secular — supported the creation of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount.

Sarid, 50, is from Tel Aviv, a former intelligence officer, a lawyer and the son of Yossi Sarid (former chairman of the Meretz Party, a former Knesset member and former minister of education). He started writing the book three years ago and believes that the creation of a Third Temple will signal the beginning of a process that would destroy the Jewish state.