When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of “bringing red cows” to the Holy Land.
The cows he was talking about are red heifers, which now graze at a secure, undisclosed location in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Some Jews and Christians believe they’re key to rebuilding the Jewish temple that once stood in Jerusalem, and to beckoning the Messiah.
To understand, you have to look back almost 2,000 years in the tumultuous history of the Middle East, when the ancient Romans destroyed the last temple in Jerusalem.
To rebuild it, fervent believers point to the Bible’s Book of Numbers, which commands the Israelites to offer “a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke.”
Only with that offering, they insist, can the temple rise again.
