Israelis Use Humor to Ease Gulf Tension : War jitters: Citizens are taking Saddam Hussein’s threats to incinerate them seriously enough. Still, they’re doing what they can to lighten the mood.

“Have a lot of good sex,” comedian Doron Nesher told his Israeli television audience this weekend, using the crudest of Hebrew expressions for his advice on how to spend the time before Jan. 15.

Sure, he is forbidden to use such language on the air, he said, but no need to worry that he will be punished--”I’m going to die tomorrow anyway.”

Israelis are taking very seriously Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s threats to incinerate the Jewish state and gas-bomb Tel Aviv. They are crowding into supermarkets for canned food to stock shelters and into hardware stores for plastic tape to seal windows against poison gas.

But despite the deep fear many say they feel underneath, and the morbid way that helpful hints about countering chemical attacks tend to dominate conversations, they are still laughing. It is the blackest of gallows humor they indulge in, with a hint of bravado--a prewar mood.

At a late-night Tel Aviv party this weekend:

* An actress joked that she had sent a letter to Hussein giving him her old boyfriend’s Tel Aviv address for bombing purposes.

* A marketing consultant proposed new postcards for tourists: Perhaps a family scene, with parents, children and dog all in gas masks, and the logo, “Come to Israel, it’s a gas”?

* A bemused member of a kibbutz described how other members all seemed to be signing up to take their turn at unpleasant jobs after the 15th, hoping against hope that maybe death would save them from milking the cows or working in the dining hall.

For chic urbanites, at least one pub in Jerusalem and another in Tel Aviv are advertising “end-of-the-world” parties Tuesday night, and a popular newspaper is offering a new list of what is in and what is out, updated for the Persian Gulf crisis. Before, for example, the truly cool people denied owning video recorders; now they deny having gone to get their gas mask kits.

Some of the humor is clearly cultivated by the government as it works to keep the population from panicking in the face of a definite date for a possible disaster. In a telling sign of behind-the-scenes efforts to stem panic, the nightly television news has removed a countdown calendar it had been displaying to mark the days until Jan. 15.

Nachman Shai, the Israeli Defense Forces spokesman, drew laugh after laugh from an audience of more than 200 who came to hear him speak Saturday morning about the crisis.

When one concerned elderly woman rose from her seat to ask whether food in the refrigerator would still be good after a gas attack, Shai assured her it probably would, given that the refrigerator is one of the most airtight places in the house.

“But that doesn’t mean you should all climb into the refrigerators,” he hastened to add, bringing on a burst of nervous laughter.

Gas mask shticks have became a staple for many Israeli comedians, and black humor pegged to the Ides of January permeated the country’s newspapers this weekend, along with highly detailed instructions on sealing rooms and donning gas masks.

In one theater supplement, critic Yoav Vinograd prefaced his review of a play by Yehoshua Sobol that opens the night of Jan. 15 with the note, “For those remaining in the country,” and the accompanying photo was captioned “Sobol vs. Saddam.”

A weak crisis joke even appeared in the recipe pages of the Jerusalem weekly newspaper supplement. The food writer, presenting a chicken and lemon dish, said that “the threatening date may seem to call for a menu for a last meal, but we retain our typical optimism.” In the real estate section, one headline read, “Despite everything, buy an apartment.”

Along with the surfeit of black humor, Tel Aviv residents say that they notice a decided rise in merrymaking in the Nonstop City, as it calls itself. The myriad cafes that line the roads of the beachside city are clearly not hurting from Iraqi-inspired gloom.

The labor newspaper Davar, under the headline “Eat and Drink, for Tomorrow Comes Saddam,” surveyed a series of packed clubs and restaurants, then asked a psychiatrist, a specialist on stress, how to interpret it.

Essentially, he said, people become more childish in times of great anxiety, losing sight of their long-term goals and running after quick gratification. The number of patients seeking his help has jumped 30% in recent weeks, he said, but most Israelis are experiencing perfectly normal reactions to stress.

Of all the country’s pundits, however, it was perhaps Amnon Denkner of the newspaper Hadashot whose final words in a weekend column were most reassuring.

“Believe me,” he wrote, “We’ll laugh about all this some day.”