Before becoming a Member of Parliament, he was a journalist, notably in the Middle East during the Six-Day War, during which time he met numerous Israeli politicians, including Moshe Dayan, and published a book recounting the war. During the 1960s he covered conflicts in Yemen and Borneo as well as the Vietnam War. In 1968, he visited Czechoslovakia to record the Prague Spring and when the Democratic Convention was held in the wake of public assassinations at Chicago in the same year he was attacked by the police.