August 1938:
An Arab rebel band late last night raided a labor camp at Athlit, coastal town between Haifa and Tel Aviv, and kidnaped a Jewish family of six, including police inspector David Leiserowitz, his wife, three children and mother-in-law. A British police inspector was wounded in the fighting.
A few days later:
Three children of the kidnaped Leiserowitz family were found alive and well before dawn yesterday in the field of Mishmar Haemek, Jewish colony about ten miles southeast of Athlit, where they were abducted by an Arab band Wednesday during a raid on a prison labor camp.
The children were discovered by a patrol of Jewish special policeman. Blindfolded when found, they told the policemen that the band had separated them from their parents and uncle immediately after the kidnaping, and had treated them well.
Rachel, 13 and oldest of the trio, said that Joussef Abu Dura, leader of the band, had made the children sign in Hebrew a promise to publish in the Hebrew press the following letter bearing his signature and had given them five dollars to cover the cost of publication:
“The children were comfortable among the Arabs. As an honorable and just man, I am returning them, even paying expenses on condition that this letter be published in Davar and Haboker–otherwise the children will be killed even if they are in London.”
Grave fears were held for the children’s parents, Police Inspector Moshe Leiserowitz and his wife Bruria, and their uncle, Eliahu Kirchiner.
I cannot find any news about the three adults ever being found.
Also 1938:
A watchman named Ben Zeev, employed on Jewish National Fund lands in Kiriat Haim in the Haifa Bay area, was believed in the hands of Arab terrorists after being missing since yesterday morning. Another Jew, Joshua Dubnow, was kidnaped by an Arab band near Jaffa yesterday. Dubnow, 36, was foreman of groves in the vicinity of Nathanya.
1940:
The bodies of three Jewish youths kidnaped by an Arab band in 1938 were discovered today in a pit near the Arab village of Zila, in the Jenin sub-district.This story from 1970 is interesting:
The youths were David Auerbach, 13; Itzhak Krupik, 18, and Jacob Zvang, 24. They were kidnaped on July 23, 1938, from the Jewish colony of Givath Ada. Identification was made through their clothes.
The Israeli government has turned down an offer by El Fatah to free an Israeli watchman they kidnapped ten months ago in exchange for a number of convicted Arab terrorists serving sentences in Israeli jails, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned today from reliable sources. According to the source, El Fatah offered to release 54-year-old Shmuel Rosenwasser. of Metullah who was seized by Arab guerrillas near the Lebanese border on the night of Dec. 31, 1969. He was subsequently taken to Jordan. In return, El Fatah demanded the release of convicted terrorists, among them Mahmoud Hijazi who was sentenced to death by an Israeli military court in 1965. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. The source said that Israeli authorities rejected the El Fatah offer because Israel, as a matter of principle, refuses to make exchange deals or to bargain with terrorists.
It is strange that so much of the discussion about the kidnapping of the three boys last week has centered on the wisdom of hitchhiking. The entire reason hitchhiking is potentially dangerous in Israel is because everyone understands that many Arabs just want to kidnap and kill Jews, no matter who they are.