From left to right: Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Sh
From left to right: Naftali Frenkel, Gilad ShCourtesy of the families

A petition has been launched calling on the US government to work towards the release of joint Israeli-American citizen Naftali Frenkel, who was among three students kidnapped by terrorists on Thursday night.

The petition - which can be signed by both US and foreign citizens, was launched late last night.

"On Thursday, June 12, 2014, three Students attempting to hitchhike home from from school were kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists," it begins.

"It is the responsibility of the United States Government to ensure the safe and timely return of it's citizen and son, Naftali Frenkel, aged 16. We demand that President Barack Obama and his administration use all means necessary to assist the Israeli Government in their efforts to locate these captive children in line with their strict stance of "No Boy will be left behind"."

The other two missing boys are Gilad Sha'ar, also 16 and Frenkel's fellow student at the Makor Chaim yeshiva high school; and 19-year-old Eyal Yifrah, who was apparently waiting at the same hitchhiking spot outside the town of Alon Shvut in the Gush Etzion bloc, south of Jerusalem.

The petition is part of a rapidly growing social media campaign, as Israelis and sympathizers from around the world have flooded Facebook and Twitter with messages of solidarity under the hashtag #BringBackOurBoys.

A "Bring Back Our Boys" Facebook page has been growing steadily, with nearly 50,000 likes since Friday; a Twitter account under the same name was also started more recently.

As time went by, some tweets focused more on the deafening silence of human rights organizations over the kidnapping of Israeli schoolchildren:

Still others reacted to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's recent announcement that Hamas was responsible for the abduction - despite being a part of the so-called "unity government" together with the supposedly moderate Fatah party of Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.

Anti-Israel tweeters have made also made concerted attempt to hijack the hashtag, drawing comparisons between the two innocent students and Arab terrorists in Israeli jails - provoking a torrent of angry and disgusted responses: