Noy Leyb left his startup behind to deploy to Gaza after the 10/7 attack. What he saw changed forever his perspective on the conflict.
When Noy Leyb was deployed in Gaza late last year, he found himself inside a Palestinian home, in the room of a young Palestinian girl. There were dolls and toys — things you would expect to find in little girls’ rooms almost anywhere around the world.
It’s what Leyb saw on the walls that caught his attention. Instead of posters of pop stars, princesses, or cartoon characters, this little girl’s room was decorated with photographs of Hamas terrorists and anti-Israel “martyrs” armed with machine guns.
Palestinians, he realized, “are raised on terror. They breathe terror.”
The 33-year-old New Yorker and Israel Defense Forces reservist was part of the first wave of soldiers who entered northern Gaza in late October last year. He served there until January, and then served from May to July defending Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. He told National Review that his experiences in combat have changed his perspective.
“I really used to believe there was a peace partner on the other side,” Leyb said of the Palestinian people. “I now understand that there really isn’t. There’s generational hate.”
In addition to being a machine gunner in an elite IDF paratrooper unit, Leyb is also an online influencer and educator. He uses his Instagram page to debunk myths about Israel, to post videos of him engaging with anti-Israel activists, and to give his 37,000 followers a behind-the-scenes look at the war — soldiers singing together, celebrating Hanukkah in Gaza, joking about IDF food, saving a puppy, locating Hamas rockets hidden in a preschool.
National Review first profiled Leyb just days before he entered Gaza last year. He had friends who were injured and killed by Hamas terrorists in the October 7 attack. He said he knew almost immediately after learning of the attack that he’d be called back to Israel.
Leyb went in and out of Gaza five times late last year. He said he’s doing okay, but he acknowledged that on those missions “you see things you don’t want to see,” including fellow soldiers being injured or killed.
“You see civilians who are being used by Hamas as human shields or as scouts, and some of them are happy to work with Hamas, but some of them are forced to work with Hamas,” he said. He also walked into Hamas houses and saw “all the humanitarian aid being stored there, so no wonder there’s a starvation crisis in Gaza,” he said.
Every time he went into Gaza, he said, he had to turn off thoughts about everything else.
“I would not think about my family, I would not think about my friends, I would not think about dating, or my business,” he said. He called it a “mind switch.”
Before the October 7 attack, Leyb was an entrepreneur who’d earned a master’s degree in business from the University of Michigan and was a leader in a startup focused on group travel packages. In the year since, his life has been turned upside down.
He let go of the startup, he said. After his deployment in Gaza, he went on a tour of North American cities speaking about his war experiences with Jewish groups and some mixed Christian groups. He attended anti-Israel protests in New York to engage with activists, and continued defending Israel online and building his Instagram presence.
“I try to show the world things that they don’t see on their traditional news media,” Leyb said. “At the end of the day, I want people to see that Israelis aren’t these monsters, these killers, these people who commit genocide.”
Leyb is still booking speaking gigs at churches and synagogues. And in August, after he returned from his deployment on Israel’s northern border, he started developing workshops aimed at educating young American Jewish students about the conflict and giving them the confidence to engage with others about it. He’s partnering with other IDF vets to deliver the curriculum and hopes to get the program up and running in the coming weeks.
Leyb said he was “very surprised” at the level of anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism that erupted at some of America’s most prestigious colleges and universities. In his engagements with student protesters, he found that many had very limited knowledge of Israel’s history, Hamas’s cruelty, and the reality of the conflict in Gaza. Many, he said, seem to just “want to feel like they are part of something, which I get.”
“But do a bit of research,” he said. “They don’t know what’s happening and they don’t want to know.”
“Look, I don’t know much about the conflict going on in, you know, China or in African countries, so I don’t advocate,” Leyb added. “And if I would advocate, I would try to make an effort to learn, read, listen to the other side. Here, it’s the blind leading the blind.”
Leyb spoke to National Review a day after Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles at Israel and after two Palestinian terrorists killed at least seven people — including a young mother shielding her baby — in an attack in Tel Aviv. U.S. protesters chanting “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” need to understand “that’s what you are screaming for,” he said.
“Whether it’s shooting ballistic missiles where each one costs I don’t know how many millions of dollars, or two . . . Palestinians coming into Israel and [shooting] innocent civilians who have nothing to do with the situation, that’s what you are calling for,” he said.
When the war in Gaza first began, Leyb viewed his mission as defending Israel and bringing quiet back to the country. A year later, after regular rocket attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and the second failed attack from Iran, he has a slightly different view.
“I think at the beginning of the war, I was more defensive,” he said. “Now I think my approach is a bit different. I feel like [Israel needs to have a] more offensive approach. If there are terrorist targets in Lebanon, in Iran, or any other country that threatens us, we need to take them out. We don’t have to wait until something happens to react.”
Leyb expects to head back to Israel for another deployment in December. “Unless, God forbid, something horrible happens to me, I plan on continuing to go and be there,” he said.
Despite his worries about the entrenched terrorist ideology among most Palestinians, Leyb still believes peace in the region is possible. First, he said, Hamas as a terror organization needs to be eliminated, though rooting out its ideology will be harder and take much longer. He also said that Israel will need to leave Gaza eventually, “because the Palestinian people need their own state.”
Most importantly, Leyb said he believes there will need to be a third-party intervention by an international body aimed at undoing Hamas’s brainwashing of the Palestinian people and teaching “normal values of peace.”
“Hopefully,” he said, “in a few generations there will be peace. I don’t believe with Hamas in power there will ever be peace.”