Noy Leyb shares his experience as a soldier in the front lines of Gaza. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports.
In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, when Israel was in shock after the barbaric Hamas attacks, we spoke to an Israeli Defense Force sergeant via Zoom. Noy Leyb had just arrived in Israel to fight for his country.
More than four months later, he’s in South Florida, with some profound experiences to share, which he started doing soon after his military reserve duty started.
“From the beginning, I decided to document my journey,” Leyb says in one of dozens of videos he has posted to his Instagram page.
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In some videos, Leyb is like a narrator explaining what is happening with his unit in Gaza.
“We have moved toward specific targeted attacks, like destroying the terror tunnel under Sinwar’s house,” he says in one video.
25,000 Instagram followers see his photos and videos. Leyb has become a Gaza war influencer, fitting for someone who left his tech startup job behind and ended up on the front lines.
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“My unit is a commando combat unit, so we’re not hanging back and watching things happen,” Leyb said.
In one video, he recounts a close call with death.
“This morning, literally 12 hours ago, my friend and I were in the second floor of a building and an RPG was shot at us from a hospital, it missed us by a couple of meters,” Leyb said.
In our interview, he said the moments of combat are separated by hours of boredom.
“No one speaks about the silence of war, there were some days when it was actually totally quiet which was actually the scariest because you know that Hamas is there, Hamas did fire at us from schools, from tunnels, from houses, from playgrounds, like we were fired at from everywhere, and when we were fired at and we knew there was a threat it was weirdly more comfortable than the silence because when there was silence we don’t know where they would appear from,” Leyb said.
He said the amount of hatred in Gaza surprised him the most, like finding posters of terrorists on a child’s bedroom wall.
“I don’t think children are born hating Israelis, I don’t think that people all of a sudden one day just hate the Jewish people, but there’s definitely brainwashing going on,” Leyb said.
Gazans are beginning to stand up against Hamas, which Leyb says is an act of immense courage.
“Not only do I have sympathy for those people, but I salute them,” Leyb said. “It’s easy to cry for a cease fire, trust me, we Israelis, we also want a cease fire, we don’t want this war, I’m telling you that as an IDF soldier.”
The soldier says Hamas will use a cease fire to re-arm, to reload, but nonetheless, there’s a path to peace.
“If Hamas says take your hostages back, I promise you, and Israel has said this, the war is over,” Leyb said.
