In August and early September, I spoke with several of the 15 people who ultimately resigned from the Biden administration, having seen this disaster in the making. All described a whiplash akin to what Habash experienced as they watch their former superiors — people they say ignored them, refused to act, and lied — join the opposition to the war and attempt to convince the public that they are blameless. If those officials are successful, the resigners say, they will end up back in power.

Josh Paul, who worked for more than a decade in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, calls the recent statements “cynical repositioning.” He quit on October 18, 2023, when he realized his bosses expected him to approve arms transfers to Israel with zero oversight. It’s true, he says, that the situation in Gaza is “worse now than it has ever been,” but the road to this point was clear. He describes Israel’s “absolute disregard for civilian life” as undeniable from the start.

Paul’s first reaction to Sullivan’s change of heart “probably isn’t printable,” he tells me. “The tool kit to restrain Israel was always available when Sullivan was national security adviser.” Without any admission of wrongdoing, Sullivan and other newly vocal figures are engaging in “legacy burnishing.” “They don’t want to go down in history as the people who facilitated either a genocide or the pathway to a genocide,” he says; they want jobs in the next White House.

Hala Rharrit, a U.S. diplomat for 18 years, resigned from her role as an Arab-language spokesperson for the State Department after refusing to repeat what she calls Biden-administration lies about the war. Like Paul, she says top officials are trying to “rewrite history” and cautions that it would be a mistake to read their statements as a moral awakening: “It’s all been calculated the entire time, then and now. It’s all for their own political power and greed.”

Stacy Gilbert, who worked on humanitarian and refugee issues for the State Department for more than 20 years before resigning in May 2024, has bitter words for the revisionists. “Good for you, Jake Sullivan. But there’s actually no difference between what Israel is doing now and what they were doing when you had the power to do something about it — except time and about 20,000 more people who’ve died.”