Christians sometimes defend the OT holy war commands on the grounds that some cultures are so depraved that you have to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. The culture is corrupt from top to bottom.
Some critics of the holy war commands counter that israel could have adopted Canaanites babies. That would break the cycle.
I've discussed this before, but now i'd like to approach it from a different angle. As a matter of fact, this isn't purely hypothetical. That's been tried in the past. Beginning in the late 19C, there are off-reservation Indian boarding schools. Indian children were taken from their families and put in boarding schools, far from home. Physical separation was considered essential to deprogram the children and acculturate them to white society. The Carlisle Indian School is a famous (or infamous) example.
This was sometimes done with the best of intentions. Yet, not surprisingly, it has been denounced. I daresay the same people who find the holy war commands objectionable would find this form of assimilation equally objectionable. We generally think it's wrong to break up families, unless the children are in a gravely abusive situation.
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