Born in Bulgaria, Bar-Zohar immigrated to Israel in 1948. He attended High School E in Tel Aviv and went on to study economics and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also studied at the Institute of Political Science in the University of Paris, where he earned a PhD. He became science editor for Davar, a weekly newspaper in 1958, but left the job the following year. Between 1960 and 1964 he wrote for LeMarhav, an Israeli newspaper in Paris. In 1967 he became a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and later lectured at the University of Haifa between 1970 and 1973.