The Syrian writer Khairy Al-Dhahabi, in his book "From Damascus to Haifa.. 300 Days in Israel," narrates the facts of the Arab defeats against Israel and what happened to him during the 300 days of captivity in Israel.

With the beginning of the October 1973 war between Israel on the one hand and Egypt and Syria on the other, an Israeli car approached a United Nations observation point and arrested a Syrian officer, and 40 years after the incident, al-Dhahabi recounts his capture plan from the armistice lines in the Syrian Golan when he was a liaison officer with the The United Nations represented the Syrian army in the fall of 1973, when Syria and Egypt decided to fight a war to recover their occupied lands since 1967.

Writers and critics, in their interviews for an episode of "Kharj al-Nass" program (13/2/2022), presented different readings about the book "From Damascus to Haifa...300 Days in Israel".

The writer and poet Omar Shabana believes that Khairy Al-Dhahabi wrote a realistic novel, through which he touched on several issues, including Syria under the rule of the Assad family and the presence of Israel in the Arab and Syrian scene in particular.

According to Shabana, the book presents the biography of Syria as a country after independence, where it was expected to be democratic and civilized, but he was surprised that the Baath Party struck the heart of Syria in the depths, making Syria a farm for the al-Assad family.

As for the literary critic Antoine Shalhat, he referred to the literary writing style in the book, but he does not see that it is a novel in the accepted sense, and he believes that what is learned from the book is closer to the personal point of view.

Tayseer Suleiman - a writer and former prisoner - spoke about the Syrian writer's intellectual and ideological projections on the events, which he said were clear, and he could have narrated them historically without ideological comment.

Arab Jews

The image of Arab Jews in the Arab mentality and the reasons for their emigration from their countries of origin and their going to Palestine constituted one of the main pillars of the book and the most prominent points of controversy in it.

On this point, the writer and poet Shabana says that Khairy Al-Dhahabi did not justify the Arab Jews to go to Israel;

Rather, he condemned the Arab regimes that pushed them to emigrate, and pointed out that Zionism played a major role in cooperating with Arab regimes in pushing Arab Jews to emigrate.

Writers and critics differ in reading another point in the book related to the conflict of reason and the unseen among the prisoners, where the writer says that he won in this struggle of the mind, which was considered a disregard for the spirituality that may help the prisoner to stand firm.

While the writer Majed Azzam considers that the author of the book "From Damascus to Haifa" was supposed to show respect for people's beliefs, and that spirituality and worship are very important to the prisoner, Omar Shabana believes that the writer's position on beliefs is natural as a secular writer.

On the other hand, Tayseer Suleiman faults the writer for his quick touching on the heroic role played by the Syrian army during the first days of the war in 1973, by saying that he did not present a state of heroism and that his army reached lands that had been occupied from him for years, considering that the issue needed a search for the reason for this absenteeism.

Literary critic Antoine Shalhat concludes that the importance of the book lies not only in the fact that it presents a picture of the experience of captivity and presents questions and diagnoses, but rather tries to present a question;

Which is to be done in order to confront this Israeli entity?