Like the sword of Damocles, this is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's worst nightmare. Indeed, it is the nightmare of any Israeli prime minister or of any Israeli citizen for that matter: kidnapping.

In terms of ranking the pain and pressure, soldiers would always be at the top of the list. That was the case with Gilad Shalit, whose abduction occurred eight years ago (June 25, 2006). After more than five years in Hamas captivity and following rallies, marches and heavy pressure wielded on Israel's decision-makers on his behalf by a whole country, he was returned home. Ranked second would be civilians. Yet, it would depend also on where they hail from. Tel Avivians would enjoy a broader consensus compared with settlers, for example. And the younger they are, the more painful the situation.

The case at hand involves three religious — albeit not ultra-Orthodox — teenage rabbinical college students, aged 16-19, two of whom reside in the territories. Apparently hitchhiking late Thursday night, June 12, they got a ride from their college in the Etzion settlement bloc, but have since vanished into thin air, although one of them did manage to call the police at real time and inform them of the kidnapping. Investigators were scrambled to this vast region located at the southern tip of the West Bank, close to the Negev desert, and all of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) followed in their footsteps. As this article is being written, three youths vanished without a trace, leaving the IDF and Shin Bet without a lead, thus prompting the start of uneasy Israeli public hysteria.

The climax of this new kidnapping incident, which changes Israel's agenda, seems to have taken place on Friday, June 13, at around 9 p.m., when the Reuters news agency based in Jerusalem received a flyer, from an unknown Salafist organization describing itself as the Hebron branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), that claimed responsibility for the act. In recent weeks, ISIS, an al-Qaeda splinter group, has begun making a greater name for itself across the Middle East.