In the old days of tribal warfare, when populations were small, and victors in war couldn't afford to be generous because a single loss could spell the end of your society forever, things were brutal. It wasn't at all unusual for the victors to put everyone to the sword, completely decimating an enemy population so that they couldn't create more soldiers and their threat would eliminated forever.

Welcome to the tribal past...with an Islamist expert. From London, of course:

MEMRI TV: British Islamist Kamal Al-Hilbawi and Liberal Nabil Yassin Debate Whether Israeli Children Constitute Legitimate Military Targets

Following are excerpts from a TV debate featuring Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi, introduced on the program as director of the London Center for the Study of Terrorism, and political analyst Dr. Nabil Yassin. Dr. Hilbawi is also former spokesman of the international Muslim Brotherhood in the West.(1) The debate aired on BBC Arabic TV on October 17, 2008

Al-Hilbawi: "I Believe That Every Israeli Civilian is a Future Soldier... Even If He Is a Child"

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: "I condemn the targeting of any civilian, but incidentally, I believe that every Israeli civilian is a future soldier."

Interviewer: "He is what?"

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: "A future soldier."

Interviewer: "Even if he is two years old?"

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: "Even if he is a child. A child born in Israel is raised on the belief that [the Arabs] are like contemptible sheep, and that this is a land without a people, and they are a people without a land. They have very strange concepts. In elementary school, they pose the following math problem: 'In your village, there are 100 Arabs. If you killed 40, how many Arabs would be left for you to kill?' This is taught in the Israeli curriculum. What would you say about that? Should a child studying this be considered a civilian? He is a future soldier."...

Dr. Nabil Yassin: "What Kamal said is very dangerous. He is familiar with the case of the Kharijites. He takes us back to the Azariqa, the Kharijites who were most lethal to Muslims. They used to cut open the bellies of pregnant women, because they believed that the child would become an enemy of the Kharijites."[...]

...Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: "Allow me. I absolutely do not condone the killing of civilians. But those responsible for the killing of these civilians are sometimes their own relatives and their own country...

"In my view, Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi is one of the people responsible for the development of religious violence, I'm sad to say."

Interviewer: "Dr. Nabil, we don't want to..."

Dr. Nabil Yassin: "Let's be clear on that... Religious scholars issued fatwas..."

Interviewer: "We are not here to pass judgment on Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi or anyone else."...