Episodes followed the events that originally led to Ziva being taken hostage by an Islamic terrorist and the later effects of the event: her relationship with Michael Rivkin, the collapse of her relationship with Tony DiNozzo, Rivkin's death at the hands of Tony and the loss of trust between Ziva and the NCIS team as a result, her leaving NCIS to rejoin Mossad, her captivity and eventual rescue, and the ramifications of the abuse she suffered.

[1] The portrayal of Ziva's divided loyalties to the United States and Israel during this period attracted attention from several Jewish critics and columnists, who discussed its implications.

[2][3][4] Specifically, the actions of Ziva's father, Eli David (Michael Nouri), drew widespread debate, and his seeming nonchalant attitude towards his daughter's abuse garnered much criticism for the character.

The character of Ziva David was introduced by series creator Donald P. Bellisario in 2005 during the third season of NCIS,[5] which follows a team of government agents who work for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

[6] Chilean-American actress Cote de Pablo was cast to portray the character, who underwent a number of revisions before ultimately being scripted as an Israeli Mossad officer assigned as a liaison to the NCIS team.

[11] From early in Ziva's time on the show producers began to toy with the idea of pairing them romantically, but continued to place a number of obstacles in their way (namely difficult circumstances and other love interests).

[16] NCIS writers introduced Merik Tadros' character, Mossad Officer Michael Rivkin, as a potential love interest for Ziva in the sixth-season premiere, "Last Man Standing".

[20] Despite this, the relationship becomes more ambiguous in the last two episodes of the season as a security breach at the SECNAV's residence leads to the death of an ICE agent and evidence points to Rivkin.

Cote de Pablo described Tony's actions as "almost unforgivable"[22] from her character's perspective despite their being in self-defense and stated, "I think sometimes when people make mistakes, they can be impulsive and judge someone on one particular thing.

She takes Rivkin's place on the Kidon Unit, embarking a mission to assassinate Saleem Ulman (Omid Abtahi), the leader of a terrorist training camp in Somalia.

With Ziva back at Mossad, her position at NCIS is terminated and the Major Case Response Team is reduced to three active members: Gibbs, DiNozzo and McGee.

[21] The search and rescue of Ziva was written into the seventh season premiere, but rather than show her in captivity, the writers decided to script the episode from Tony's point of view.

Flashbacks are threaded through the episode, mostly set on the Damocles, showing that Ziva had befriended a U.S. Marine deserter-turned-freelance-agent on board who was among those killed and that Eli later ordered her to continue on the mission despite the risks making her death almost inevitable.

She becomes a suspect for the marine's death when Eli, in an attempt to prevent her from leaving Mossad, orders her former team leader, Malachi Ben Gidon, who had been on the mission with her, to accuse her of being responsible for the killing.

However, he is killed in a targeted shooting before he is able to make peace with his daughter, greatly devastating Ziva and prompting her to embark on a campaign of revenge against the man responsible: Ilan Bodnar.

[1] Shane Brennan wrote a cliffhanger for the season finale that briefly shows her in the aftermath of an evidently brutal interrogation; in it, she is limp and tied to a chair, bloody and bruised.

[36] Though an episode was filmed to clear some of the questions by showing the events that led up to her captivity,[27] it did not delve into her time as a hostage and de Pablo later confirmed that the ambiguity of what had happened during those four months was intentional.

[37][38][39] De Pablo did not comment on the subject of her character's ordeal except to affirm that Saleem and his men did "bad things" to Ziva and to suggest that she had suppressed her feelings regarding the trauma in its aftermath.

[42] Gary Glasberg, who took over as executive producer for Shane Brennan in 2011, gave her that opportunity in the latter half of the tenth season, which focused on Ziva's attempts to get revenge for her father's assassination.

The situation was made more sordid when the new season revealed that Eli had ordered her to continue on her assignment, even after it became clear that her chances of survival were slim; to make matters worse, he failed to rescue his daughter after she had been taken captive by the Somali terrorists.

[3]Harvard academic Eitan Kensky also weighed in on the matter: Instead of the weak, mother-obsessed Jewish male, we have a trained assassin psychologically scarred by her father...For all her strength, she cannot be strong on her own.

[45] Within the series, Ziva is able to partially reconcile with Eli and reach an "unspoken forgiveness" for him in the eighth season,[46] but the show's writers did not begin to redeem his character until shortly before his death in the tenth-season episode "Shabbat Shalom".

But if he's Michael, then the highly celebrated Washington-Jerusalem connection is in for some tough times indeed.During the first few seasons, storylines related to Israel focus on the "peculiar arrangement" between the agencies "in which the brilliant daughter of the head of Mossad (Ziva David) has been embedded in the American NCIS".

[2] The captivity storylines took a different route by using the characters of Ziva and Michael Rivkin to symbolize the "two Israels American policy makers have faced over the years".

[48] Steven L. Spiegel, Director of the Center for Middle East Development and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), drew parallels between their interactions with their American counterparts and those of prominent Israeli politicians.

Ziva, he reasoned, could be likened to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, or Ehud Olmert in that she is able to agree with the American agencies on a more basic, fundamental level.

[59] Allison Waldman from AOL summarized the execution of the characters' search for and rescue of Ziva: It was supremely satisfying to watch them go back month-by-month to reveal how Gibbs, Tony, McGee and Abby were undone by Ziva's absence...Nothing could top the moment, though, when Tony got to look Saleem in the eye, referred to the movie True Lies, and calmly reminded the guy that his boss was an expert sniper.

It seemed like a prime opportunity for Ziva's character to shine - relating to a suspect similarly strong, powerful, yet vulnerable - but the plot quickly moved in other directions.

[65] The characters, Sam Hanna (LL Cool J) and Marty Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen), are taken hostage by Isaak Sidorov, a Russian arms dealer who interrogates them for information.

Unlike with the original NCIS, Brennan opted to have them tortured onscreen, with Sidorov electrocuting Sam and forcing a dentist drill into Deeks' mouth.