‘Anyone who says they’re not scared is a liar,’ Noy Leyb tells NR. ‘We’re going against people who behead people and burn people.’
Noy Leyb is not looking for payback.
A machine gunner in an elite Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper unit, the 32-year-old New York resident expects to be sent into combat any day. But in his mind, he’s not going in to get revenge on Hamas terrorists for slaughtering Israeli citizens on October 7.
His mission, as he sees it, is to protect Israel and to bring quiet back to the country.
“We are going to war as humans with morals and ethics,” Leyb said in an interview with National Review over his dinner on Tuesday. “We’re not monsters, and we’re not animals. We have a specific mission. We’re going to finish it, complete it, and then come back home.”
While the long-expected ground invasion of Gaza has not come as quickly as many expected, Leyb said he is confident they’re going in — either into Gaza or into a fight against Hezbollah to the north. “We are going to go in,” he said. “I don’t know when. I don’t know where.”
When that happens, he said, his job as a machine gunner will be to make noise, “to make the team feel confident that the sharpshooter can shoot quietly and the sniper can shoot quietly.”
He said he’s not surprised that the IDF has not rushed into an invasion of Gaza.
“We’re not dealing with an army. We’re dealing with terrorists, ones that have no heart, ones that are worse than ISIS,” Leyb said. “To make it more complicated, we’re dealing with another front up north. So, I think the IDF is being more careful about when we’re going in, and how we’re going to go in, and how we’re going to split up the forces. Because just marching in is a death wish, and the IDF really values life. And the difference is Hamas worships death.”
After the Hamas attack, National Review reached out to some American citizens and residents heading to Israel to fight the terrorist organization. A previous story featured a 42-year-old father of five in Los Angeles who volunteered after witnessing Hamas’s butchery on October 7.
Leyb is a reservist, who knew when he saw news of the attacks that he would be called back.
Born in Canada, Leyb was raised in what he described as a “very Zionist home” in Calgary. His dad was an officer in the IDF. By his mid teens, he said, he knew he wasn’t going to apply to university but would instead move to Israel at 18 and join the army.
He moved to the U.S. in 2020 for graduate school, and now runs a smart booking business for group trips and vacations.
Leyb said he was at a Shabbat dinner on Friday, October 6. When he got home around midnight, he started receiving notifications about the Hamas attacks in Israel. He said he stayed up most of the night texting with friends and family and getting updates on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app. He said it was hard to believe what he saw.
“You see these crazy videos, and you’re like, is this happening right now?” he said. “I knew they were real, but I didn’t believe it, because even the best producer couldn’t make a horror movie like this.”
Leyb said he knew almost immediately that he would be called back to Israel. One of his two brothers was already with his unit, and his younger brother was on his way to his unit. So, Leyb booked the first flight back that he could on El Al, the Israeli airline.
“It was just one big blur,” Leyb said. “You’re going to war. You know you’re going to war. Your friends are already on base preparing to go into one of the conflict zones. And I don’t know that any book or any lesson can truly prepare you.”
Leyb said he knows people who were killed in the Hamas attack.
“In Israel, we’re not six degrees of separation, we’re one, maybe two,” he said. “I know people who got injured, shot in the stomach. I know people who were killed. I have friends in my unit who used to serve with me who were killed. I have friends in my unit whose family was kidnapped. Every day I wake up to the news hoping that I don’t see a familiar face or a familiar name, but that’s not the reality.”
Since heading back to Israel, Leyb has been documenting his experiences and thoughts on Instagram. In one recent video, he blasted the Black Lives Matter movement for hypocrisy for promoting Hamas propaganda and for not standing up for Jewish people. He took the New York Times to task for spreading a “massive lie” about Israel targeting a Gaza hospital, and for what he says is its history of antisemitism.
Leyb said he’s been heartened by the rallies that have been held supporting Israel after the attacks, but at the same time he’s shocked to see how many Americans have jumped on board the Palestinian cause.
“It’s no lie that Palestinian civilians are being injured, being killed, children, women. And it’s no lie, it’s horrible,” Leyb said, adding that sacrificing civilians is part of the Hamas strategy. “In the U.S., many people, they just don’t know. They see Palestine, they feel bad. They see kids, images, and they support the cause. But they don’t know that they’re supporting a terrorist organization at the end of the day.”
“And by supporting Hamas, they’re supporting their own civilians getting killed,” he said.
While many of his colleagues have families and kids, Leyb is a single guy who has been focused on building his business. He said his mother, with three boys in the military, is worried. And he acknowledged that he’s a little bit scared, too.
“Anyone who says they’re not scared is a liar,” he said. “We’re going against people who behead people and burn people. I’m scared for my family, for my friends.”
“Am I scared? I’m scared, but just a bit,” he added. “I’m scared just enough to keep me on my toes, just enough to make the correct steps, not to step on the mines. And I’m scared enough just to make sure that when I go into the conflict zone, I’m looking left and right, up and down.”