This week marks the 50th anniversary of my first visit to Israel.

It was July 1973 and I was one of a group of six members of the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL) sent to participate in a 3-week long course called something like ‘Student Leadership in Israel Seminar’.

There were students from many countries, including others from the US. Our job, as we understood it, was to show support to our comrades in the Israel Labour Party and their youth section, the Young Guard. So from day one, we were doing a kind of pro-Zionist propaganda among Jewish students even though I, for one, was not yet a Zionist.

Our home base was a compound on top of Mount Carmel in Haifa called Beit Ruthenberg. Conditions were very basic. Some of the lectures were memorable, including one by the well-known Marxist writer Shlomo Avineri, who characterised the Israel-Palestine conflict as a tragedy — a conflict of two rights. This was in 1973, so that was pretty amazing to hear.

The trips were also memorable. On one visit to the Golan Heights, we were taken around by an Israeli army officer who showed a bit too much bravado for my taste. They took us to the very front lines, facing the Syrians. The positions we visited were almost certainly overrun some two months later when the Yom Kippur War began.

I did not fall in love with Israel on this visit — I found the country quite hot and dusty, and didn’t fully get the appeal (which would come later). I did, however, fall in love.

It was the beginning of an interesting summer.