- "I wish I could see his face when he realizes he created not a mole but a monster eager to strike at the heart of Mossad and Israel."
- —Ari Haswari describing Eli in the NCIS Season 3 episode, Kill Ari, Part 2.
Eli David (אלי דוד) was the Director of Mossad and also the father of former Mossad officer-turned-NCIS Special Agent Ziva David, double agent and terrorist Ari Haswari, and Tali David as well as the grandfather of Tali David-DiNozzo and also the ex-husband of Rivka David up until his death in January 2013.
He was mentioned a lot and was a big part of major storylines and Ziva's storyline, even if he did not appear in many episodes.
Biography[]
Pre-Series[]
Eli David was married to Rivka David until 1991 when she left him for cheating on her. They had two daughters together, Ziva David and Tali David. He lost his youngest daughter in a Hamas bombing when she was 16.
Prior to marrying Rivka he had a son named Ari Haswari with Hasmia Haswari whom he groomed to become a double agent for him and Mossad. It backfired spectacularly as Ari became a triple agent and worked against Israel instead after his mother was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Eli was sent by his masters as a doctor in the Gaza Strip and befriended an Arab woman named Hasmina Haswari, for the sole purpose of having a son. He needed a boy with the right ethnicity to infiltrate Al Qaeda and of the two's union, a young boy named Ari was born.
From birth, Eli planned to turn his son into a mole in Hamas, he sent Ari to Edinburgh Medical School so that he could become a doctor and work in the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip with his mother. However, Hasmina was killed in an Israeli retalitory strike, and as a result Ari developed a deep hatred for his father. later accepting to join Mossad as an undercover operative in Hamas and Al-Qaeda. What Eli didn't see was that Ari had seen through his scheme and was planning to get his revenge. During his time as a field officer, Eli met and worked with NCIS Special Agent and later Director Leon Vance with the two men becoming close friends after Eli saved Vance's life from a group of assassins.
Later, Eli started to rise through the ranks of Mossad until he reached the position of Deputy Director. He married an Israeli woman and thay had two daughters, Ziva and Talia. Ziva joined Mossad and Talia was killed in a Hamas suicide bombing at the age of sixteen.
Eli raised Ziva as a killer despite her mother's attempt to make sure that neither Ziva or Talia became killers like their father, claiming that it was for her to give a future to his grandchildren. However, similar to Ari, he planned to use her skills to protect Israel even at the cost of his daughter's life.
He was in Amsterdam in 1991 after his wife left him. That was where he met Leon Vance, the future director of NCIS, on his first mission. Eli saved Vance's life by making Vance help him make a bomb to take out the Russian who was out to kill Vance. They succeeded to take out the Russian's men, but not the man himself. The Russian was killed by Gibbs years later.
When Eli realized that Ari was slipping out of his control, Ziva became his control officer, believing that he was innocent of the accusations and hoping to protect him.
However, Ari was planning a major terrorist attack against Israel so he could have his revenge against Eli for the death of his mother. Upon realizing that Ari had gone completely rogue, Eli ordered Ziva to kill him and, according to Vance, gain NCIS Special Agent Gibbs's trust. When Ari was killed, Eli reluctantly assigned Ziva to the newly-created Mossad Liaison Officer position at NCIS. When she started to evade him and refer only to the Mossad Officer-in-Charge in America, he ordered a team of agents to keep an eye on her.
Ziva's position as Liaison Officer was terminated by Eli's old friend Leon Vance and she returned to Mossad. To insure that Ziva would remain his agent, Eli ordered Mossad Officer Michael Rivkin to seduce her in hopes to push her to maintain her loyalty to him and Mossad.
NCIS Season 6[]
He makes his first appearance in the premiere of season 6 Last Man Standing (episode). Before that he has only been mentioned.
After an operation which helped NCIS find a mole in their organization, Eli reassigned Ziva to NCIS at the request of Director Vance and Gibbs. Ziva and Michael end up in a relationship, since their partnership when Ziva worked with Mossad after the team members got reassigned for a while. He assigned Michael Rivkin to go to Los Angeles and infiltrate a terrorist cell that was working for Saleem Ulman, a terrorist who had killed one of Eli's Officers.
Desperate for revenge, Eli ordered Rivkin to find Saleem's location and destroy him and his organization. Rivkin was caught by NCIS's Office of Special Projects in Los Angeles (where NCIS's MCRT team was working a joint investigation) and was forced out of the country before he could recover the intel he needed. However, Rivkin was able to kill all of the cell members except for the cell's leader. Eli gave Rivkin a cover as a rogue officer and sent him back to the US. There, Rivkin killed the cell leader and recovered the intel which he passed to Ziva. However, he accidentally killed an ICE agent when spying on an American intelligence summit at the Secretary of the Navy's house. While investigating the ICE agent's death, NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo discovered that Rivkin was the killer and attempted to arrest him despite not knowing that the ICE agent's death had been an accident. When he resisted arrest, the two got into a brutal fight that ended with DiNozzo shooting Rivkin in self-defense. Unfortunately, Rivkin's injuries were so severe that he died hours later and as a result, Eli called Ziva back to Israel, and she came with Director Vance, Gibbs and DiNozzo in tow.
In Aliyah (episode) Eli interrogated DiNozzo and tried to make him admit that he had killed Rivkin out of jealousy. However, Eli had underestimated Tony, and Eli accidentally revealed that he had sent Rivkin back to the US with orders to seduce Ziva. This made Ziva feel betrayed. During a meeting with Vance, Eli told him about Saleem and his plans. It was there in Israel that Eli confronted Ziva about her loyalties, and encouraged her to "make this [her] aliyah" and return to Mossad. After Gibbs left her behind because Ziva said she could not work with Tony anymore, she stays behind in Israel.
NCIS Season 7[]
Ziva resigned from her Liaison position from NCIS and took Rivkin's place on the Kidon Unit to try and stop Saleem but was later captured and tortured for months. NCIS saved her, which led the team including Gibbs and Ziva to believe that she was left for dead by her father. As a result she leaves Mossad and chooses to become an NCIS Agent and therefor American citizen. This causes a rift between Eli and Ziva, and Eli is angry at Gibbs, Vance and Ziva herself because of her decision.
Not wanting to lose his best agent and daughter, Eli sent Officer Ben-Gidon to the US to frame Ziva for the death of a USMC Sergeant who had helped Mossad earlier in the hunt for Saleem, in hopes that she would have no choice but to return to Mossad. Luckily, Gibbs and Vance managed to expose the frame and sent Ben-Gidon back to Israel with a message for Eli: "She's off limits".
Finally realizing the truth and seeing what kind of a ruthless man her father was, as well as the lengths he was willing to go to keep her, and believing that he had abandoned her in the desert, Ziva turned her back on him. She severed her ties to him, saying, "Eli is all but dead to me."
NCIS Season 8[]
He makes an appearance in episode 8 and 9 of the season, when he comes to DC to attend a conference along with previous NCIS agents, Directors and others involved in different cases over the past decades. He is also hunted by 3 terrorist that wants to kill him. He is wounded in a bombing that was aimed to kill Director Leon Vance. He also saw Ziva for the first time since she left Mossad, and they managed to mend their relationship a little bit, after their fall out in season 7. Eli admitted that the job as Director had taken pieces of him and that he was a different man since taking over the position as head of Mossad.
NCIS Season 10[]
He died in the 11th episode of season 10 in an assasination.