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 desperate 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."