Eight years previously, Aviel was sent from his home in Beersheba to a boarding school, where he strove to shed his traditional Moroccan-Jewish heritage, adopting the norms and culture of his middle-class, Eastern European-descended Ashkenazi peers and even dropping his surname in favour of the more all-Israeli sounding "Gur".

Decades ago, the latter owned the South's most prosperous falafel stand; his adopted son Albert ("Beber") married his biological daughter Vivienne in spite of his severe opposition, and gradually drove Pinto out of business.

Aviel grudgingly brings with him his Ashkenazi girlfriend Shahar, a fellow officer, who is baffled by his stereotypical Algerian family, the members of which hold a dim view of the ethnic gap in Israel – Beber refuses to honor the moment of silence on Holocaust Remembrance Day, mockingly stating "I will stand when they teach about my 'shtetl' in Algeria!"

Aviel's older brother, Avi, is a low-ranking police officer who still lives with his parents, while the younger twenty-something Eviatar dreams of a career in Oriental music and occasionally engages in petty crime for the local mafia boss, Ciao.

Combined with his personal story, he sought to address the larger subject of ethnic relations within Israeli society, which he believed should be tackled from a fresh, unbiased and unbitter angle by young Middle Eastern-descended (Mizrahim) artists.

He worked on the project for over a year, making the plot ever more complex and theatrical but not nearing completion, until the company coupled him with professional screenwriter Uri Weissbrod, who helped him finish.

[2] While the budget remained undisclosed, sources within the company told the press it was the most expensive project undertaken by HOT since its establishment and claimed Zaguri Empire was Israel's highest-costing television production ever.

[1][3] It was approved when Israeli studios, influenced by the great success of Prisoners of War by Gideon Raff who was nearly anonymous before making his breakthrough, sought to encourage young and unknown artists.

[5] Ninet Tayeb was originally cast as Avishag, but had to forgo due to previous commitments in the music industry, leaving the role to the young and anonymous Chen Amsalem, who entered acting school just three months before passing the audition.

Zaguri Empire turned into an immediate success: within three weeks of the premiere, HOT reported it was the best series launch they ever had, with 3,000,000 video on demand rentals already, high ratings on their digital cable service and tens of thousands of followers in social media networks.

Yedioth Ahronoth's television reviewer Ariana Melamed stated the series was "not racist, but diversified", and that its poignant depiction was not stereotypical, but cleverly exploiting these precepts to undermine conventional discourse.

[18] Makor Rishon's critic I'nabl Yaffe praised the series for closely emulating the outline of a Greek tragedy, referenced to with the mentioning of Oedipus, by contrasting predestination with free will.

Nuri commented that the series transcended the regular ethnic debate as much as it did genre conventions: "Zaguri is as much about Moroccan-descended Jews in Israel as Lord of the Flies is about British children...

"[21] Veteran Art critic Kobi Niv went as far as stating the programme was "a greater revolution than the '77 Upheaval in regards to the Israeli society's treatment" of the subject: "Zaguri Empire's makers reappropriated the condescending, ridiculing manner in which Mizrahim were portrayed by Ashkenazim and their collaborators among the former."

He argued that by having a creator of Middle Eastern descent present his ethnic group as backward and vulgar, in a manner consistent with their prevalent depiction in entertainment, the producers inoculated themselves from charges of racism.

[23] In the alternative-viewpoint magazine haO'ketz, edited by the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition's leaders Yossi Dahan and Ishak Saporta, Dr. Iris Hefetz-Borchardt sharply condemned Zaguri as an instrument of Ashkenazi oppression, which presented its characters as inferior for commercial ends and also lacked in artistic merit.