One of the main charges against Canaan is that they accused Canaan of sacrificing children. It's the exact same "think of the children" justification used endlessly today.
In fact, even as late as the Talmud it was explicitly recorded that the whole damn point of the Binding of Isaac story is to give a mythic impetus to the newly-formed Judaic religion to outlaw human sacrifice. Which, yeah, sorta indicates that it wasn't so unthinkable that nobody had to forbid it.
It seems like the primary goal of the war was simply conquest, not freeing Canaanite children. With the child sacrifice simply being used to justify that expansionary war.
Unfortunately, at the time of the Canaanite cities, there wasn't really much infrastructure for providing welfare services to war orphans, and there was a very real risk that young males of conquered peoples would grow up to seek genocidal revenge on their conquerors. By that standard, offering homes to the female prisoners of war was relatively compassionate.
More like taking forced brides from among the desirable female captives. I'm sure many in that situation would prefer death. Arguably, sparing the male children their life dominated by genocidal vengeance is the more compassionate action.
I'm not sure anyone today can reasonably say what they thought. The desire for human survival, though, is incredibly strong.
more likely sex slaves, given the references to young virgins.
Moral arguments for war are bankrupt and disguise the truth.
> Although a lot of things have changed, the nature of human conflict and the desire for power haven't.
The Pentateuch is clear that the land was given to Abraham and his descendants. After their 400+ years in bondage in Egypt, they returned and reclaimed their land. They weren’t encouraged to kick the Canaanites out because of child sacrifice; (although, that was certainly a practice that some were engaged in.) In any case, the OT doesn’t paint a picture of the Hebrews being some force of social justice, ridding that particular parcel of geography of some vile practice... indeed, Solomon ended up erecting shrines to Moloch, Manessah (a Jewish king) sacrificed his own son to Moloch, as did King Ahaz, and the Jew’s tendency to fall into periods of child sacrifice and idolatry is recounted time and time again throughout the OT. In other words, the vice of infanticide wasn’t described in the OT as exclusive to the Canaanites.
In short, I think you are somewhat confused... clearly, child sacrifice is bad, but it wasn’t the ‘main’ reason — or even a minor reason - for the conquest. Cite something specific if I’m mistaken.