Israel Air Force pilots successfully targeted and killed 8 enemy fighters in Gaza over the weekend. Congratulations, IAF pilots! Unfortunately, this is not the kind of war that can be won by killing 8 or 100 Jihadis per day. Swatting at the mosquitoes will not drain the swamp. This swamp breeds more Jihadi mosquitoes than a civilized people would find morally acceptable to kill.

Israel Air Force (IAF) pilots successfully targeted and killed a terrorist cell late Sunday night in the southern Gaza border town of Rafiah after a holiday weekend which included multiple rocket attacks, mortar fire and other terror offensives in southern Israel.

Two armed Hamas terrorists were killed in the strike, according to IDF sources, bringing to eight the number of terrorists eliminated so far in IAF air strikes in response to Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel over the weekend. Hamas claimed the dead terrorists were civilians, adding that the apparent target was senior terrorist Raed el-Atar, who they said was not wounded in the strike.

The strike followed a spate of seven Kassam rocket attacks on the western Negev and dozens of mortar shells fired at the Jewish communities in the region over the weekend.

The IAF also struck Hamas targets elsewhere in Gaza throughout the weekend following the attempted large-scale attack on the Kerem Shalom Crossing scant hours before the start of the Passover holiday. Israel had kept the crossing open on a daily basis for shipments of humanitarian aid.

Saturday evening, the IAF fired missiles at a squad of Hamas gunmen near the northern Gaza neighborhood of Jebalya as they were on their way to carry out a missile attack on Israel. Four terrorists were killed.IAF pilots killed a fifth terrorist in a separate attack shortly afterwards. A sixth Hamas terrorist was killed in another IAF air strike early Sunday morning.

Military sources in the field told Arutz-7 that soldiers and officers are becoming increasingly frustrated with their inability to “hit back at the enemy” in response to mortar and rocket fire on Jewish communities in the western Negev. “We are becoming sitting ducks,” complained one IDF officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s not right. We certainly have the military capability to deal with this.”

The source added that the military leadership was “not the issue.”