Noy Leyb, 33, is a Canadian from Calgary and was an active member of the Jewish community there, attending Jewish schools Akiva Academy and The Calgary Jewish Academy, and then public high school. He also attended synagogue and took part in youth programs at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Calgary, and Camp BB Riback.
Leyb moved to Israel after high school and served in the army for a few years as a paratrooper, reaching the rank of First Sergeant and being stationed on the borders of Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. He attributed this life path to his Zionist parents, who “always told me to be proud of my Judaism and to never be afraid to speak out.” One of Leyb’s brothers also noted that their father, a grandfather and a cousin had all served in the Israeli army.
After finishing his army service, Leyb lived and studied in Israel until 2020 when he moved to Michigan for an MBA, then back to Israel and then to New York, according to his LinkedIn. He returned to the Israeli army a day after Oct. 7, 2023, and also abandoned his tech start-up to focus on hasbara full time, according to Alberta Jewish News (AJN), who he told: “I sleep maybe four hours a night, and the first thing I do is hasbara. It never gets old, at least not yet.”
Leyb has had a great deal of media exposure, with a verified Instagram account with more than 38,000 followers, a Twitter account with the handle “YourIDFSoldier” and interviews and coverage in a range of publications, including: the Canadian Jewish News, CBC, the National Post, CNN, National Review, NBC, Jewish Journal, TMZ, ABC, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, Business Insider, Global News, and others. He has also given speeches in cities throughout North America.
Even Leyb’s personal life has managed to attract media attention, including when he was banned from the dating platforms Tinder and Hinge. Leyb said, “I’m not one to blame antisemitism right away, but this is it. Nothing else explains this […] I’ve never done anything wrong.” The ban came after he uploaded a photo of himself wearing his army uniform and holding a machine gun. “This is the dating app that bills itself as the one ‘designed to be deleted,’ but I was the one who wound up being deleted,” Leyb added.
Leyb has spoken about his post-October 7 deployment in great detail. He told AJN that he spent his first three weeks back in the army training with a Special Forces commando group, and ended up being one of the first to go into Gaza.
Leyb said his unit played a key role in “dismantling Hamas” in northern Gaza, but that the experience was different from past deployments: “I’ve been on the Lebanon border, the Gaza border. I’ve arrested terrorists, I’ve gone into Arab villages, I’ve done everything, but this is different.” Leyb told the National Review he believes Palestinians are “raised on terror” and “breathe terror.”
Leyb’s unit was eventually released in January, and then was deployed again in May. He has since focused full time on his hasbara efforts, saying, “We need to keep this momentum up, this strong Jewish pride, supporting each other, right, left, liberal, orthodox, it doesn’t matter.”
Noy is a brother of two other Israeli soldiers included in this database: Shar Leyb and Tav Leyb.
(A version of this mini-bio was originally published in a November 2024 article at The Maple.)
