The events of the Book of Joshua are troubling to deal with, yes.
Actually I once heard a sermon that was more of an interview between the pastor and a prominent Old Testament scholar who teaches at a seminary here, with at topic of basically "what violent and unsettling stories in the Bible really mean" with that book being the primary focus. The way she explained it is that it was more of a war story and allegorical to the ancient Israelites, and that archaeological evidence does not show anything for Jericho's walls crumbling. However there is some evidence that there was a group of slaves that may have escaped from the Canaanites and joined in with ancient Israel, and she later compared it to the Battle Hymn of the Republic and how it was used by slaves during the Civil War and their war anthems and all that. Interesting take.
And my views on Hitchens are very well known. Actually like most vocal atheists the worst thing about him wasn't so much that he was an asshole but that he was a boring asshole who did nothing but spew out hackneyed arguments that the "new atheism" brigade and their internet followers have spewed out hundreds of times already.
