One of the most horrific aspects of the October 7 Hamas attacks was the systematic sexual violence inflicted on innocent Israeli men and women. Perhaps even more disturbing than the atrocities themselves has been the global response—or sometimes the lack of one. Many world leaders have failed to condemn these crimes, instead casting Israel as the aggressor, while others have remained silent or denied their occurrence. The hypocrisy and moral blindness in the face of such degrading crimes against humanity are staggering.
In a recent Jerusalem Post podcast, studio manager Shifra Jacobs sat down with Dr. Yoav Heller, a prominent Holocaust historian, to discuss the sexual violence committed on October 7, the nature of true evil, and the ideological underpinnings of the attacks.
Dr. Heller is also the chairman of the Wingate Institute and head of the Fourth Quarter Movement, a democratic initiative comprising Israelis from all sectors of society and political backgrounds. Describing himself as "a historian who wants to live history and contribute to changing it,” Heller offers both academic and personal insights into the October 7 massacre.
Holocaust comparisons: learning from history
Many people worldwide have drawn parallels between October 7 and the Holocaust. Heller said that initially he resisted such comparisons, fearing it might trivialize the Holocaust. However, he acknowledged what he calls “Holocaust moments”: a grandmother shielding her grandchildren in a shelter, or a woman hiding under her boyfriend’s body for hours.
“These are moments we never thought we would see in Israel for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he said. “You cannot ignore it.”
Heller emphasized that while the same kind of evil was present on October 7 - an attempt to annihilate Jews - the key difference is that today, the Jewish people have a state.
However, he warned that the collective memory - both in Israel and abroad - is losing perspective of the historical magnitude of what happened. “This wasn’t just another attack between Israelis and Palestinians. It was an attempt at genocide.”
Weaponizing sexual violence
Moving the conversation toward the weaponizing of sexual violence, Jacobs shared how horrifying this is: “Mutilation, rape—these kinds of disgusting acts were used as a weapon,” and asked Dr. Heller his perspective on how to prove this.
Dr. Heller underscored how the disturbing nature of the atrocities and documentation prove that sexual violence was used as a tactical weapon. He stressed that the sexual violence on October 7 was not random or spontaneous but was deliberately orchestrated.
Unlike previous conflicts, these were premeditated acts that aimed to portray a picture of victory against the victims. “Hamas wanted to dehumanize, humiliate, and conquer in the deepest way,” he said.
The Dinah Project, an initiative led by three female legal and gender experts working to achieve recognition and justice for the survivors of sexual violence on October 7, played a crucial role in documenting this, said Heller. Using oral history—the same method Heller used in his PhD—the project gathered testimonies showing disturbing patterns of coordinated sexual violence.
Dr. Heller explained that the Dinah Project conducted an in-depth cross-analysis, establishing a very broad picture of what happened on October 7. In every site where the attacks occurred, they found the same patterns of sexual violence, indicating that someone had given these terrorists a script of what to do.
“This wasn’t coincidence,” said Dr. Heller, “it was part of an ideology of genocide.”
He commended the project, saying, “I want to salute the researchers” and stressed that “we have to establish an understanding of how important projects like the Dinah Project are.”
Defining evil: the redemptive narrative
Jacobs asked Heller to define what he believes is "true evil."
“Evilness is the attempt or will to [murder] people as a means of redemption,” he responded.
He explained that he drew this definition from historian Saul Friedländer, who used the term “redemptive antisemitism” to describe the Nazi ideology. The Nazis promised that by killing Jews, you would be redeemed.
“This means that biologically, you have nothing to do in order to run away from your destiny as a Jew. That’s it. You were born. You are destined to die in order for me to get redemption,” said Heller.
Heller sees the same ideology driving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran— what he calls the annihilation axis. They too have a redemptive narrative. He cited the intercepted phone calls from October 7, including one from a terrorist from Kibbutz Mefalsim who proudly told his mother, “I killed 10 [women],” to which she replied, “Kill more.”
This, Heller says, epitomizes the whole establishment and ideology educating those behind the massacre: “Kill the Jews, and be redeemed.” That, he argues, is not political conflict—it is evil.
Therefore, he stresses, connecting this attack to occupation or to any rationale or pragmatic conflict, as aggressive as it may be - is a lie.
“This is an ideology which is redemptive. Kill the Jews. Kill the Israelis. Destroy the people of Israel and you will be redeemed. That’s pure evilness, and that’s, for me, what we saw on October 7, and that’s a wake-up call.”
<br>The two types of wartime sexual violence
Dr. Heller categorizes wartime sexual violence into two types:
Barbaric violence, such as the Soviet rape of German women in WWII, where rape was considered a part of conquest. To them, this was a part of their privilege. “You come, you conquer, you rape. It’s awful. We can’t even imagine the magnitude of what they experienced.”
Strategic violence, where rape is weaponized as ideology, like the 1937 Nanking Massacre, when Japanese forces raped tens of thousands of Chinese women. This was an ideology. It was pre-planned. “They came there to tell them we own you,” says Heller. Another example is the high magnitude and mass participation of the Hutu rapes against millions of Tutsi women in Rwanda in 1994. Millions of Tutsi women were murdered. “If you look at the scripts of Hutu leaders, you can see that they spoke about taking beautiful Tutsi women and humiliating them as a symbol of destroying them,” said Heller. In these cases, sexual violence was used to dominate and erase the enemy.
He says Hamas falls into the second category. October 7 was not about political motives or occupation; it was about humiliation, domination, and destruction.
Changing the Narrative and the Illusion of Peace
This is why October 7 was so shocking, agreed Jacobs, as it shifted people’s perceptions so much. She asked how Israelis can change the global narrative after such atrocities.
Heller shared his own ideological evolution. Once a peacenik and a supporter of the two-state solution, he became disillusioned while doing his PhD in London in 2010. He realized that many of his fellow students weren’t interested in a two-state solution but were talking about replacing the state of Israel altogether.
This is why we have to think broader than October 7, Dr. Heller stressed. “We are surrounded by threats everywhere - from the north, Radwan forces, Syrian militias, and from Lebanon. It could have been much worse. We have to think on these terms; otherwise we’ll never understand what happened - this is how we need to look at it.”
The very well-known concept of the right of return is merely a means to fuel the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel, he said. This is the ideology behind October 7. Moving forward we can take three lessons from this perspective shift.
<br>Three lessons moving forward
1) Only we can protect ourselves. Israel exists to prevent atrocities like October 7. “We said ‘Never again,’—but for a few hours, this [concept] didn’t exist,” said Dr. Heller.
2) We cannot afford to enter a civil war. Division is a weapon that our enemies will use against us.
3) Speak up daily. The only way to resolve this conflict and achieve peace is for Arabs and Palestinians to recognize Zionism and Israel’s right to exist and abandon the Right of Return narrative. “Only then the possibilities of peace will be endless,” said Heller.
Despite it all, Heller still believes in true peace: “Peace is the dream of generations of the Jewish people. I’ll never give up peace—but it must be real, not fake.”
We cannot be tolerant of these radical forces, he added. These are people who don’t want peace. We can’t live alongside them. We need to destroy them.
It is not all bad though, he stressed. There has been a gradual shift in education in some Gulf states - Islam is becoming more moderate in the way they teach. So when you gradually change the processes within, there is a lot of hope, but also “let’s not be foolish until then - because then we’ll die.”
Denial, isolation, and the danger of silence
Despite overwhelming evidence of what occurred on October 7, there is still so much denial from people who either refuse to believe that it happened or don’t want to.
Dr. Heller related how devastating this has been for liberal Israelis or Jews in the Diaspora.
“Suddenly you see these people involve politics, confuse between the facts and their political views and adopt the Hamas narrative,” he said, adding that they will actually look at Israeli women in the eyes, who tell them that they were sexually violated, and they don’t believe them.”
Academia, Heller warns, has been poisoned by radical politics. Many now equate genocidal massacre with legitimate resistance. He reminds the listeners that these redemptive evil ideologies in the Middle East are fueled by partners around the world.
Jacobs added how, as a Jewish Israeli woman, she suddenly felt invisible, like she didn't count. Dr. Heller shared her sentiment:
“You are totally exposed for your mere identity as a Jew, or a Jewish woman, and there’s nothing you can do besides hide. You might be an ultra-liberal progressive, but as soon as someone finds out you’re a Jew, no one cares - you’re mocked and kicked out.”
Dr. Heller urged people to understand and expose the ideology of redemptive evil—because “it spreads exponentially” unless confronted.
He emphasized the importance of oral history in preserving truth. This is the aim of the Dinah Project: documenting survivor testimonies and ensuring the stories are heard.
“Behind every description are victims,” he said. “Some are gone. Others must live with the horrors.”
Personal loss: remembering Alex Dancyg
Dr. Heller also shared how the personal loss of his long-time friend and teacher Alex Dancyg, from Nir Oz, shaped his perspective after October 7. Dancyg was kidnapped and later killed in captivity.
Heller was 25 years old when he first met Dancyg, who was a Holocaust instructor at Yad Vashem. He too dreamed of being an instructor and of taking delegations to Poland.
Dancyg had been a major influence in Heller’s life.
“From the first second that I met Alex Dancyg, he changed my life and my perspective about history and about history being reality. Alex taught me that history is a means to actually understanding people’s stories, and through that, to explain to yourself the present and also to talk about the future, not only the past.”
He was also a very influential person who educated generations of Holocaust instructors in Israel.
Dancyg believed in teaching about life, not just death, during the Holocaust.
“We’re not going to Poland in order to look for blood. If you want to look for blood, don’t come,” Dancyg would say. He explained that in the Holocaust real people were murdered. They had their dreams, their aspirations, their jobs, and their families. A whole Jewish civilization and culture was destroyed.
Now, Heller is committed to continuing that legacy—bringing delegations, telling Dancyg’s story, and ensuring that the lives lost on October 7 are remembered not just as victims, but as people who lived.
A call for moral clarity
This interview is a sobering call not only for recognition but for moral clarity in the face of unspeakable abuse. It calls on listeners to face the truth, stand with the victims, and reject the silence that allows such evil to go unanswered.
We must talk about what happened, Dr.Heller concluded. “We owe it to the victims—both those who died and those who survived.”