Case Study 01

The Story the Defense Ministry Hoped Would Disappear

Investigative Reporting · 7 Yamim · Yedioth Ahronoth · 2021

Front page · Yedioth Ahronoth

The Challenge

Israel's Iron Dome was a celebrated national triumph, but a pattern was emerging in its shadows: relatively young operational team members were developing cancer at alarming rates. The military denied any connection to their service. Researchers had raw data, but no statistical significance required to publish. The soldiers were running out of time.

"Who's taking responsibility for us?" — Ran Mazor, Iron Dome veteran, diagnosed with bone cancer at 22

What I Did

I came across the story while working on a 20-year retrospective on the Iron Dome program, when a source mentioned in passing that there was a problem I might want to look into. The research team working to prove the connection built a strong case, but lacked one critical piece to give them statistical significance: a control group.

To verify the human data, I built a network that grew from within by interviewing soldiers who had fallen ill, their families, and the parents of those who had died. Then, I did something the researchers hadn't done yet: together with my colleague Ido Shvartzuch, I built a statistical anchor. By focusing on the 2011 cohort and cross-referencing findings against the National Cancer Registry, I established a rate six times higher than the general population. This provided the peer-reviewed foundation the research lacked.

I stood behind these findings even as the Defense Ministry accused me of harming national security.

The Impact

The piece ran as the lead front-page story in Yedioth Ahronoth's news section, rare for a magazine piece, and as the cover of 7 Yamim. Within a week, three additional soldiers came forward to Moran Ditsch's organization, were verified, and agreed to participate in the research. In a separate channel, parents of soldiers who had served on the system began contacting me directly. From those conversations, an organized group formed and sent a formal letter to the Minister of Defense demanding action. My methodology was subsequently credited by name in an international peer-reviewed journal, and the story prompted formal Knesset committee discussions.

Why You Should Care

The pressure in this case was heavy, leaning on the unconditional trust most Israelis have for the military. This wasn't just about a story. It was a test of what bends instead of breaking.

An executive facing a coordinated campaign doesn't need a louder voice. They need a professional who has operated under extreme institutional pressure, knows how to fill in critical missing links in complex data, and has the resolve to hold the narrative without breaking.

GBH

Case Study 02

Imaleh: A Parenting App Built for the Parent's Nervous System

Product Narrative · Research · 2026

The Challenge

March 2025. The Iran war. Millions of Israelis were sent into bomb shelters after three years of accumulated stress. This situation led me to parents who told me about a specific kind of pain: the impossibility of self-regulation while sitting next to a child who could not regulate either.

Existing services were clinical, achieving mainly either alienation or shame. The central barrier was sharper still: parents are willing to admit their child is in distress, but are not willing to admit they are.

The actual user is the parent; the child is the arena.

What I Did

I built the Imaleh app that presents itself as a tool for helping children. That was the cover story. The actual user is the parent; the child is the arena.

The product gives parents structured scripts for thirty-second emotional regulation, framed as something they are doing for the child. The parent receives the tool, and the child gets the parent. I designed the interaction flow, wrote the scripts, conducted user research, and built the working prototype using AI tooling.

The Impact

Live prototype, April 2026. User research informing the next iteration.

Why You Should Care

Most product narratives are written after the product is built, with the story chasing the feature. I work in the opposite direction. The narrative comes first: identifying the gap, understanding what the user is actually willing to admit, and building a product they will use even when they cannot say why.

For a founder building a product whose user is reluctant to claim its real value, this is the difference between a product that fails because it forces the user to confess, and one that succeeds because it lets them keep their cover story.

Try the App →

GBH

Case Study 03

Mr. Television Thought He Was in for Another Puff Piece. Big Mistake. Huge

Strategic Interviewing · 7 Leilot · Yedioth Ahronoth · 2016

"The Pundit" · 7 Leilot

The Challenge

Israel's most celebrated broadcaster was practiced at controlling narratives for decades. How do you lead someone into a moment of self-disclosure he cannot take back, while keeping him relaxed enough to walk into it on his own?

What I Did

I built a decision tree the night before. On paper. In pen. Each potential answer mapped to a follow-up branch. The interview itself looked like an unhurried profile conversation, ranging across history, politics, and life at 85. The architecture was invisible to him. The cover quote came out almost voluntarily:

"If you pinched a woman's behind, she would have slapped you. Today they run to a lawyer. I'm in favor of getting slapped and being done with it."

The Impact

Cover and news promos. In the following days, two women contacted rape crisis centers to report inappropriate behavior. The Israeli Journalists' Caucus issued a public condemnation. Four separate accounts were eventually published across leading Israeli media. One of the earliest public reckonings of its kind in Israel, predating the global MeToo movement by nearly a year.

Why You Should Care

The skill is not building the tree. The skill is hiding it. The interview has to feel like a conversation, not an interrogation. The subject had to believe he was in control of the room, choosing his own anecdotes, surprising himself with what he was willing to say. If he can feel the structure, he will defend against it. If he cannot, he walks right into it.

The moment that became the cover quote came out almost voluntarily because the architecture was invisible. Every exit had already been closed and yet, he experienced it as warmth.

An executive sitting across from a hostile interviewer faces the same architecture, only they are on the wrong side of it. Most media training treats this as a survival exercise: deflect, redirect, stay on message. That works against amateurs. It does not work against someone who has built a tree and knows how to keep it hidden.

What they need is someone who can build their tree first, walk them through every branch, and teach them to perform spontaneity while following a plan. It is not just about knowing the answers. It is about staying invisible inside the structure.

GBH

Case Study 04

The ₪6,000 Chef

Investigative Reporting · 7 Leilot · Yedioth Ahronoth · 2010

Inside spread · 7 Leilot

The Challenge

Eyal Shani was Israel's most beloved celebrity chef, a star judge on MasterChef, the face of a national obsession with poetic food. He was also bankrupt, with 33 open enforcement cases and ₪17 million in declared debts. Officially, he was earning ₪6,000 a month as a salaried cook in restaurants owned by other people.

The numbers didn't add up. The question was how to prove it.

What I Did

Working with my colleague Tzach Shpitzen, I mapped the legal architecture Shani had built around himself. No assets in his name. Income flowing through his partner's bank account. Restaurants registered to a family friend who described his role as taking half an hour a week.

I obtained court documents, interrogation transcripts, and testimony from former partners, sous-chefs, and investors. The sources didn't volunteer; each had a reason to stay silent. What broke this story open was the math: a top-tier Israeli chef earning ₪6,000 while his sous-chef earned ₪9,000. Either the salary was fictional or the chef was.

The Impact

Cover of 7 Leilot, November 2010. Four years later, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Varda Alshich ruled on the same question the article had raised, in almost the same language:

"It has been proven that the debtor submitted false declarations regarding his income from the restaurants. In practice, he is not a salaried employee but a partner who shares the restaurant income with the formal owner."

She ordered his arrest. The investigation had named what the court eventually confirmed.

Why You Should Care

The story isn't about a chef. It's about a structure. Shani had built a legal architecture around himself that required everyone, partners, restaurants, accountants, to participate in a fiction. The numbers told the truth quietly, and only if someone was willing to read them.

Four skills converged here: accessing rooms others can't enter, decoding structures experts have missed, predicting when a subject will evade, and remaining composed under real pressure.

These are the same skills required when a company is under coordinated pressure from regulators, activist investors, or hostile coverage. Not louder messaging. Not better PR. The ability to read the structure underneath the public claim, identify which version of the story will survive scrutiny, and build communications that hold up to the math.

That's the work. Reading what's actually there. Saying what can be said. Knowing the difference between the cover story and the truth, on both sides of the table.

GBH

Case Study 05

Ruth Sirkis: How One Cookbook Reorganized Israeli Identity

Cultural Criticism · Editorial Direction · 7 Yamim · 2025

Recipe spread · 7 Yamim

The Challenge

To present Ruth Sirkis at the scale her influence actually operated: culinary, social, feminist, and pop-cultural icon. For fifty years, anniversary pieces had introduced her as a simple recipe writer. I had to argue for a different category entirely, one with analytical depth, while staying inside the conservative format of a nostalgic food project and fighting for ten pages of premium editorial real estate.

The second challenge was trust. Sirkis and her husband and publisher, Rafi, were veterans of decades of disappointing press encounters. This was likely her last major interview and they needed to be persuaded that this time would be different, and persuaded again throughout the months it took to build the project.

What I Did

The premise of the project I created was an argument: Ruth Sirkis was not a nostalgic cookbook author. She was the figure who taught Israelis what private hospitality looks like in a society of abundance, who imported a worldview through recipes, and whose work the establishment refused to recognize as culture. Anthropologist Nir Avieli told me on record that he had submitted her name for the Israel Prize multiple times and been dismissed:

"It's food. It's beneath us. She's a woman who deals with food, so it's not worthy."

I built the project in two halves. The first made the analytical case: sociologists, food historians, and an anthropologist arguing that Sirkis was a civilizational figure who redefined Israeli leisure and hospitality habits, taste, and femininity.

The second half made the case in practice. I paired six rising chefs with iconic recipes from her 1975 book, and asked them to create contemporary versions. The pairings were arguments: a Palestinian chef reinterpreting a Baked Alaska; a MasterChef finalist taking on the chicken in oranges that made the original book cover; and a wellness blogger reclaiming the stuffed mushroom once dismissed as a symbol of domestic servitude.

Throughout, I held the relationship with the Sirkises. Months of conversations. Walking them through every decision so they could see what I was building before it ran.

The Impact

A ten-page cover project for the luxury Passover 2025 supplement of 7 Yamim. Participants including Tom Aviv (185K+ followers), Shiri Amit, and Itai Dagan tagged the piece unprompted. Most importantly, the Sirkises, despite their history with the press, were satisfied with the result.

Why You Should Care

The same misfiling that happened to Ruth Sirkis happens to companies and leaders. A founder gets typed as the technical one. A company gets typed as a tools vendor. A product gets typed as a feature of someone else's platform. The framing holds for years, even when it no longer fits. Those inside it usually can't see past it.

Repositioning under these conditions needs more than a louder voice. It needs building the argument in two registers at once: the analytical case for why the old frame is wrong, and the demonstration that proves the new one is right.

I argued for the scale of the project and got it okayed. I held the trust of two veterans who had been disappointed by the press for decades. The project is the answer to whether the argument was worth the real estate, and whether the relationships were worth maintaining.

GBH

GabiBar-Haim