Israelis Get First Gas Masks With Mixed Emotions : Defense: Three cities get equipment to guard against a chemical assault. Questions on effectiveness arise.

On the big movie screen at the town hall auditorium here Sunday, a grim-faced, bearded soldier explained how to jab an anti-nerve-gas syringe into the thigh, while in the audience, teen-age youngsters hooted and hollered as if they were at a showing of Ninja Turtles.

Such is the jumbled mood in Israel as the government began to hand out gas masks and anti-chemical-war agents to the entire population of 4.7 million citizens. The distribution is the biggest anyone can recall since Britain was under air attack from Nazi Germany in World War II.

On a practical level, the Israeli project has aroused some controversy. How effective is the equipment, anyway? Will people have time to fasten the masks as missiles rain in? What if someone is on the street or at work and his mask is at home?

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has threatened to strike at Israel with an arsenal of chemical weapons if United States and allied forces in the Persian Gulf invade or if a United Nations-sanctioned trade ban chokes his country. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir defends the distribution of gas masks “because we take his threats seriously.”

Comments by Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Mordechai, commander of Israel’s central region, suggested that the dispensing of masks is meant as a morale builder for the armed forces.

Speaking of reserve soldiers who, on a moment’s notice, might have to be mobilized for war, he remarked: “It’s best that they have the feeling the masks are in their homes and can go to the army feeling (their families) are protected.”

Mordechai’s comments dovetailed with one theory that Iraq would use chemical weapons to try to disrupt Israeli mobilization of its land and air forces.

In any event, on the emotional level, the effect on civilians appears to vary widely. On one hand, delivering gas masks to men, women and children is meant to soothe fears over the threat of chemical death from Iraq. On the other, the very fact of handing out the masks and other paraphernalia is an incitement to nervousness, emphasizing that there is danger on the horizon.

Over the weekend, someone hurled a tear-gas grenade at an apartment building in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, setting off a minor panic. Residents believed that war was under way and flooded first-aid stations with telephone calls, the Jerusalem Post reported.

“We were watching television. Suddenly, I felt I could not breathe and my throat ached,” the paper quoted a resident as saying. “My first thought was about my kids being suffocated by nerve gas. Stupidly, we ran and opened the windows, which only increased the effect of the gas.”

Paramedics treated “anxiety attacks,” the Post reported. Newspapers here have been less than reassuring. The biggest-selling newspapers ran bold headlines Sunday declaring that American officials consider an Iraqi attack on Israel “a real possibility.”

In Kfar Yona, several recipients of the masks expressed belief that Iraq would not attack Israel with chemical weapons because of fear of massive retaliation. “Iraq would be crazy to attack Israel. Maybe someone here would be killed, but the response would destroy Iraq,” said Sassi Elia, 25, a student and father of a 2-month-old baby.

Kfar Yona, a bedroom community of 5,000 residents in central Israel, was one of three towns selected to receive gas masks during the next three days. The distribution at Kfar Yona, Ofaqim in the south and Yokneam in the north is meant to test the delivery system before the national program gets under way later this month.

The atmosphere at the town hall here was orderly, considering the numerous families with energetic small children who approached to receive the gas masks. The residents were notified by mail and were scheduled to pick up the material by alphabetical order.

Once they register, the families pick up the equipment from a storeroom and then are given a demonstration by a soldier. The lesson is repeated in a movie being shown, if not heard above the teen-age din, as well as in a book of instructions on sale for $5.

There are masks sized for adults and children, plastic hoods equipped with filters for toddlers and incubator-like tents for infants. Some children laughed when fitted with masks or special hoods, others wailed in tears. “Today my family and I are going to the distribution point to get our masks . . . and hope very, very much we will never need them,” an Ofaqim resident named Shalom told Israeli Army Radio.

The anti-chemical kits also contain syringes of an anti-nerve-gas agent and powder to absorb liquid chemicals. Full bodysuits like those used by U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia are not available.

About 25,000 masks specially designed to fit over beards were being ordered from Germany by a Jerusalem Orthodox Jewish group to accommodate pious Jewish men who refuse to cut their beards to conform with the narrower masks made in Israel.

Since the Aug. 2 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, war fever in Israel has swung between peaks of high anxiety and low expectations. Early war talk has been replaced by the serenity of a series of Jewish holidays and traditional family gatherings. News of government scandals and the adventures of a motorcycle-riding bank robber have competed with reports from the Persian Gulf in Israeli papers.

The metaphorical horror of Jews being the target of poison gas--a grim if indirect parallel of the fate of millions of Jews at the hands of German Nazis in World War II--has received little attention. “There is not a real preoccupation,” said philosopher David Hartman. “Israelis feel they can defend themselves.”

The announcement last week that gas masks would be distributed dried up the little tourism from abroad still headed Israel’s way since the gulf crisis began. Charter flights from Scandinavia to the Red Sea resort of Eilat were canceled, and several hotels in Jerusalem have reduced their staffs.

There was some confusion over exactly when gas masks would be provided to the 1.7 million Palestinians who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Concern has been voiced that Palestinians would not keep the masks for an emergency but would use them instead to defend themselves against tear gas during stone-throwing melees characteristic of the Arab uprising in the occupied territories.

Maj. Gen. Mordechai, who is in charge of military operations in the West Bank, said that Palestinians would not get masks unless a conflict with Iraq breaks out.

Israeli officials have said that the Palestinians in the territories would be charged $20 for the masks because the taxes they pay do not cover the costs of the devices. Arab citizens of Israel receive the masks free of charge.