(OPINION) 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.
Instrumental in bringing the heifers to the Holy Land was Yitshak Mamo, of Uvne Jerusalem, a group committed to seeing a new temple built in Jerusalem’s Old City.
“You can check to see if they have any white or black hairs,” he told CBS News, explaining that any hair that isn’t red would disqualify the cows from fulfilling their prophesied role.
Finding the red heifers took years. The quest led Mamo not to Jewish breeders but to Christian ranchers thousands of miles away. “After a long search, we found them in Texas,” he said. “Texas red angus.”
To bypass strict laws in place at the time that banned the export of U.S. cattle to Israel, the heifers were classified as pets, Mamo said with a laugh.
But to those following biblical commandments, the cows are no laughing matter, he added, stressing that it was no publicity stunt. “Harry Potter is a good story. The Bible is not a story,” he said. “The Bible is a way of God to lead us.”
But while they’re classed as pets, there are no plans to let the red heifers live out long happy lives.
A massive white altar awaits, where they are to be burned on a plot of land overlooking the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Mamo said the ceremony must be performed looking directly into where the ancient Second Temple stood, until it was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.
“A Pandora’s box that nobody can close”
What Mamo didn’t mention is what stands in the temple’s place now: The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, which are among the holiest sites in Islam. (READ MORE)
