Applause went up as rescuers pulled Daniela Largo Sánchez from the ruins of a building where she had been trapped for 36 hours. According to Bogota firefighters the woman had been located ten hours before the rescue but had to be delicately rescued as she was buried deep under the rubble.

This @CFTC seal, recovered from the ruins of the Twin Towers following the September 11th attacks, hangs with honor in our New York office as a solemn reminder of the lives lost 25 years ago. Today we remember their lives, the courage of our first responders, and the unity and resolve of our nation in the days that followed. Let us never forget.

On this week's Quite Right podcast: This week, Michael Gove is joined by historian Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss the rulers, revolutionaries and nation builders who shaped one of the world's most turbulent regions. From Ibn Saud's dramatic conquest of Riyadh and Atatürk's creation of modern Turkey to Ben-Gurion, Reza Shah and Nasser, Simon explores the extraordinary personalities who built states from the ruins of empire. What made these leaders so successful – and why did so many of their projects end in dictatorship, war or collapse? Listen | | @michaelgove

A legendary smokehouse in Kansas City. Hickory smoke rolling out of brick chimneys since nineteen forty-six. I stood before the wooden ordering counter, staring at an item listed as Burnt Ends. My tactical memories flared. In fortress warfare, the burnt ends were the blackened cedar beams pulled from a ruined citadel after the gates fell. Was this the meal of disgraced commanders? A dish of penance for men who lost their banner? For seven full minutes I stood at the glass, arms folded across my chest, refusing to reveal my shameful ignorance to the cashier. Big Darryl, a towering pitmaster wielding a twelve-inch brisket knife like a halberd, stepped up to the counter and leaned down. Buddy, you been staring at that sign like it insulted your mother. You have not the faintest clue what a burnt end is, do you? Shame choked my throat. My ears burned scarlet. I bowed my head and forced out the three hardest words in the warrior tongue. I do not. Big Darryl’s face split into a wide, golden grin. He brought the knife down on a smoking black brisket, carved off a glistening charred corner dripping with dark molasses bark, dipped it into warm sauce, and laid it on brown butcher paper. Put that in your mouth right now, Darryl ordered. Then you can ask me why. I placed the dark cube upon my tongue. It did not chew. It dissolved into woodsmoke, black sugar, and unconditional grace. Tears sprang from my eyes. I looked up at the giant with trembling lips. Why? Darryl slammed his fist on the cutting board with pure joy: Because the smoke loves the corners best, little brother! I ordered three pounds. Ignorance was annihilated in a single bite.

What is one to do when a party founded by former Nazis adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, apologizes for its past and pledges to be a stalwart friend of Israel? That’s the question facing Austrian Jews and Israeli decision makers this week, after Austria’s Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl apologized to the Jewish people from the floor of the European Parliament. The Freedom Party of Austria was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi agriculture minister and SS officer. When it entered government in 2000, Israel recalled its ambassador from Vienna, and the other 14 EU states curtailed their bilateral contacts with Austria. When the FPÖ returned to government in 2017, Israeli officials still refused to meet its ministers. Twenty-six years after that recall, at a conference in the European Parliament titled “Islamism and Antisemitism: Threats to Europe’s Freedom,” Kickl told an audience that included senior Likud members that Austria under his chancellorship would prove itself a loyal and unshakeable friend of Israel. He read all 11 IHRA examples aloud, one by one, and said why: so that nobody could later call the recognition non-binding, incomplete or meant for internal consumption. He apologized as party chairman to Austria’s Jewish citizens, to the victims and survivors of Nazism and to the Jewish people, and endorsed moving Austria’s embassy to Jerusalem. The conference ended with dozens of MEPs from Europe’s right-wing parties signing a charter adopting the IHRA principles. Israel’s reaction was split. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who has spent two years building this channel alongside FPÖ MEP Harald Vilimsky and Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, called the speech “one of the most significant speeches ever delivered by an Austrian politician regarding Israel and the Jewish people.” The competition for that title is presumably not what Chikli wanted to evoke. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was cooler. The remarks were “an important and positive development,” he said, but “building trust also requires translating commitments into actions.” He announced no change in Israeli state policy toward the party. The gap between Chikli and Sa’ar is two answers to the same question: where is Israel to find new friends? Sa’ar has been working the global south, South America in particular, with some success. Chikli and much of Likud are prospecting the untouched corners of Europe. The latter approach has greater reward, but also greater risk, potentially clashing with Israel’s role as protector of world Jewry. European Jews have historically aligned against the far right, much of it born from the ruins of Nazism and carrying a long record of antisemitism. The FPÖ’s behavior at the conference didn’t mollify that concern. Vilimsky, who organized the conference, turned on the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, the elected representative body of Austrian Jewry, which he said had a “very, very left” leadership, fraternized with the socialists and missed no opportunity to act against the FPÖ. Those “few leftists in Vienna,” he added, did not concern him. Presumably because of all his new “friends” in Jerusalem. The warming relationship between Israel and the European right is not a spontaneous outpouring of philosemitism, but rather coincides with its rise in mainstream politics. In the September 2024 election, the FPÖ took 28.8 percent and 57 seats, its best national result. Joining the European mainstream requires shedding the Nazi past, and buying trust from a local Jewish community is slow, expensive and unguaranteed. Israel, it appears, can render the same service in exchange for the international support it has been desperately short of in recent years. Israel shouldn’t mortgage its relationship with world Jewry to buy support, and it can’t afford to refuse friendship outright. In 2010 I interviewed the FPÖ’s then-leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, after the party’s strong showing in the Vienna state election, and though he went out of his way to make me, an Israeli, feel comfortable, I couldn’t shake the plastered-on smile he gave me. Legitimacy from Israel and from the Jewish people must be earned, not exchanged.