First, the notion that the conquest is genocidal is simply false. Morality, not race, was the key issue in the conquest. Ethics, not ethnicity, is the driving category. The Canaanites were not punished with extermination because they were Canaanites; rather, they were destroyed because they were wicked idolaters and God chose to no longer tolerate them on His earth. In other words, to call the conquest an act of “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” is a category mistake. It would