On July 23, more than 4,000 Israelis overran the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem under the protection of a police escort. The “ storming ” of the mosque grounds was in direct contravention of the 1924 treaty that makes Jordan the custodian of this key Islamic site, on which no Jewish religious activity is allowed. Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, joined the unlawful incursion, which was timed to the Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples.
The religious Jews who organized the event are part of a fundamentalist network known as the Temple Mount movement, whose goal is to replace the Al-Aqsa Mosque with a Third Temple, nearly 2,000 years after the Second Temple’s destruction by the Roman army.
The stakes of this project are high for a region already in flames. Because the mosque and nearby Dome of the Rock constitute Islam’s principal holy site in Jerusalem, every Muslim country in the world sees threats to it as an insult and an outrage. In September 2000, a similar unauthorized visit by Ariel Sharon triggered the Second Intifada.
Media coverage of last month’s provocation has generally skipped past the bizarre role played by a group of evangelical Texas ranchers. This is perhaps understandable, because it is almost too weird, even by standards of ancient prophecy, to believe. But it’s true: At the center of the Venn overlap between Rapture-ready MAGA and the Temple Mount movement is a steady supply of red-cow semen. Specifically, the genetic material required to produce the red heifer that meets certain sacrificial requirements as described in the Torah. According to the Book of Numbers, the ashes of such a beast can be mixed with spring water to produce a magic paste with the power to purify men from the stain of death. Since the 1980s, the Temple Mount movement has advocated the idea that such a pure-red cow will herald and enable a spiritually pure construction crew to finally build the Third Holy Temple on the grounds of Al-Aqsa.
The search has been on ever since.
The stakes of this project are high for a region already in flames.
In 1987, a rabbi named Yisrael Ariel founded the Temple Institute in Jerusalem as a kind of activist Third Temple think tank. For decades, it has claimed to have a team of Jewish builders on standby, specially raised from birth, to begin construction as soon as the magic cow paste is ready. After the temple’s completion, these builders are to act as its officials on the temple grounds, where many religious Jews believe the Ark of the Covenant is buried.
“The fate of the entire world depends on the red heifer,” declares the institute’s website, whose “Divine ordinance [is] beyond the grasp of man’s frail intellect.”
There’s just one problem: Red cows are extremely rare in the Middle East.
According to the Torah’s instructions, candidate cows cannot have a single hair of a different color. They must also be completely unblemished, and innocent of pregnancies and yokes.
The Temple Institute has long petitioned the Israeli government to support its search for a red heifer, as young cows that have never given birth are called. But even Benjamin Netanyahu has been hesitant to directly endorse it. This is because every Islamic government in the world is closely following the developments around the Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed rode to heaven on a flying donkey and met Allah. (The mosque was added in the eighth century.) On Aug. 5, Jordan convened an emergency meeting of 20 Islamic countries to draft a response to the new incursions. They restated Jordan’s special status and declared that violating the site’s exclusively Muslim character risked a major military conflict. The group set up an international media channel so that any fresh incidents will immediately be broadcast throughout the Muslim world, including Pakistan and Indonesia.
At present, the situation is stable, but also extremely fragile, as a fresh generation of artificially inseminated red heifers is being raised by the Temple Institute.
The key American figure in all this is Byron Stinson, a small-scale rancher, trucking company owner and Christian Zionist from Glen Rose, Texas. Beginning in the 2000s, he developed a relationship with Temple Institute members during regular visits to Israel, and eagerly offered up his network of evangelical ranchers, who possessed mighty herds of red-haired Angus cattle that are unknown in the Middle East due to the climate.
Of the thousands of red calves suddenly available to the movement, Stinson and his Texas friends selected 21 calves as the best candidates. But importing farm animals from the U.S. is illegal in Israel, and red tape slowed the process down. Eventually, the institute settled on the idea of importing the cows as “pets.” This worked, but limited the magical herd to five individuals, which finally arrived in Israel in September 2022. The animals were put to graze at a secret site until they were the right age for the sacrifice, (between two and three years).
Among the groups that took notice of the preparations was Hamas.
The Israeli response has only fueled the religious nationalism.
One year after the cows’ arrival, on Oct. 7, 2023, the group launched an operation it called the Al-Aqsa Flood. Interviewed on Egyptian TV on Oct. 26, the former head of Hamas in Gaza, Khaled Mashal, cited the scheme “to import five red cows from the United States of America to implement the Zionist plan to destroy the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] in the shortest possible period.”
“Shame would stain the nation’s forehead,” Mashal continued. “And so, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was necessary.” This justification was repeated three months later in a speech by Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida, who described the “bringing of the red cows” as the peak of Israeli aggression against “the heart of Arab identity.”
Whether the red cows were really the driving force behind the Oct. 7 attacks, the Israeli response has only fueled the religious nationalism of which the Temple Mount movement is an expression. This poses a problem for the current Israeli government. Although clearly set on establishing Greater Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu has not endorsed any version of this religious fantasy. The question is how long he can maintain this distance as the Israeli population becomes more fanatical. His government already includes religious figures such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has taken center stage in the recent incursions.
At a farm in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh, meanwhile, red cow candidates have been a source of drama and disappointment. The five animals imported three years ago were disqualified when they grew black or white hairs, which tends to happen as Angus cattle age. A promising calf born in Israel by artificial insemination in May 2026 — using Texas semen — appears to be out of the running after someone put an electronic ear tag on it, disqualifying the animal due to the Torah’s “unblemished” criterion. But hope — and new red calves — springs eternal. Every promising candidate keeps the issue alive for the excitable young men leading the Al-Aqsa incursions and settler attacks on Palestinian farmers in the West Bank.
Red cow news is also entertainment for the religious extremist element of MAGA. Last August, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson took a party of evangelicals to visit the red heifers in Shiloh. One can assume his interest is shared by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who likewise believe that Greater Israel coming under Jewish rule is necessary to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus. For them, a major international war over the Al-Aqsa Mosque issue is part of an unstoppable, glorious plan.
For the American evangelicals watching all this unfold, the red heifer sacrifice doesn’t just augur the Rapture. For millions, it is also further proof that God has chosen Trump and that he therefore deserves unqualified worship and adulation. When Trump read from 2 Chronicles 7:11-12 at an “America Reads the Bible” online event in April 2016, Red Heifer enthusiasts pointed out that this verse about the destruction of the First Temple is linked to their version of the prophecy.
The clock is ticking on a red heifer sacrifice to produce the magic paste needed for the Third Temple construction crew. The institute is creating its own Angus herd by artificial insemination, and claims that two calves have already been born in Israel as a result. It will take a couple of years for them to be ready, and they may or may not grow hairs of the wrong color, but sooner or later, a red cow will appear. Stinson, for his part, appears especially impatient, and went rogue in sacrificing one of the five imported cows despite its imperfections. He and some of his fellow extremists now claim that the resulting paste can cure Alzheimer’s and return sight to the blind.
But Donald Trump and miracle cures do not interest religious Jews — the Third Temple does. And if the religious right is in full control of the Israeli government when the rabbis approve a cow of purest red, all bets will be off. The holy cow will cue a fleet of holy bulldozers.
The post Holy Cow: The Red-Haired Heifer Uniting Christian Zionists and Israel’s Religious Right appeared first on Truthdig .
Holy Cow: The Red-Haired Heifer Uniting Christian Zionists and Israel’s Religious Right
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