impatient, and temperamental ... these groups, while at times positive, were sometimes damaging to the cause.") Further attention to the issue of Soviet Jewry was spurred by the "refuseniks," people denied exit visas from the USSR. The Soviet government in 1972 imposed the "diploma tax," a fee meant to discourage educated Jews and other Soviet citizens from emigrating. Apparently aware that the tax would be controversial, the Soviets intended to keep the law secret. However, word reached Western governments when a Ukrainian Jew forwarded a copy of the decree to Levanon, who then passed it to American and Israeli officials. Levanon allied with Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson to pass a law denying most-favored nation trade status to countries that restricted the free emigration of its citizens. According to Levanon, there was an expectation among the political elite that his alignment with Israel's left-wing establishment would cost him his job under right-wing premier Menachem Begin, who was elected in 1977. Begin, however, asked Levanon to stay at his post. Because Nativ's name was never released to the public, nor was any other official name, Soviet Jews had come to know the organization as "Nehemiah's Office." By the late 1970s, Israeli officials and American grassroots groups were clashing over the direction and purpose of the Soviet Jewry movement. A large number of Soviet emigrants were "dropping out"—abandoning their exit visas intended for Israel and seeking refuge in the United States instead. Levanon and the Israelis were alarmed by this trend and decided that urgent action needed to be taken to reverse it. Levanon, working with the Jewish Agency and philanthropist Max Fisher, tried to have European offices of American Jewish aid groups (particularly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) shut down. Fierce opposition among the American Jewish community scuttled the plan, signaling a decline in Nativ's influence in the U.S. According to one scholar, Nativ over time "lost the confidence of activists, both within the USSR and in Western countries." Levanon later reflected, "It was a very bitter and sad period ... I realize that none of us was a hundred percent right; it was a very difficult issue." Final years Levanon retired in 1982, returning to Kfar Blum. He wrote two memoirs: Code Name: Nativ, about the history of the organization, and The Road to the Banks of the Jordan, about his migration to Israel.