http://www.ebritic.com/?p=233188Tom Hanks: Kosovo always was Serbia
February 17, 201313
Serbian press are ablaze with stories that Tom Hanks has nailed Serbian colours firmly on the Kosovo mast in an interview with TV station E! when he stated Kosovo has always been Serbian and would one day be again.
Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s all-time highest box office star, was publicising a Steven Spielberg production about the history of Israel. Hanks compared the historic suffering of Jews – who for centuries greeted one another “Next Year in Jerusalem” to that of Kosovo’s Serbs. Hanks went on to say:
We have a similar case today in Kosovo. It was inhabited by Serbs, who built monasteries and had their own kings and then they were expelled by Albanians. At the end of the 20th century there were NATO bombs falling on Serbs, but they still do not want to accept Kosovo as an independent state and proudly say that “Kosovo is Serbia”, like the Jews who once eventually returned to their country, so maybe that is the case with the Serbs.
Tom Hanks has sided with various left-leaning causes from the Obama campaign, gay rights and environmentalism. He also has a keen interest in history – the actor can trace his ancestry back to Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln.
Tom Hanks with wife Rita Wilson
Hanks grew up in Catholic then Mormon household. After he married actress Rita Wilson, of Greek Orthodox descent, he apparently converted to Orthodoxy and there has since found stability in the faith. (The article goes on to say that the pair often attend daily services during Holy Week and their daughter is a nun serving in the Holy Land at the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.) Perhaps this gave him another perspective on the Kosovo question?
Some 16 months previously, the Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued this report that Hanks discussed possible cooperation of a film project sponsored by the Minister.