An Israeli researcher recently met a colleague in the United States. Where, the American asked him, do you get the tranquillity to engage in your research while Iran is obtaining nuclear capabilities, missiles and bombs whose aim it is to destroy you? We've gotten used to it, the Israeli answered. Once every few years, we go to war and between one war and the next, we continue to live a normal life.

This behavior, responded the colleague whose research deals with the response to terrorism in this part of the world, is appropriate for the conventional stage of your wars. Now, and with Iran's nuclear capabilities, you must behave differently. You're living today in a way that is suited to what was yesterday; you're in denial of the threat. So much so that I fear you will let Iran level the first strike against you.

At the beginning of the week, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad released a statement, which merited a shrug of the shoulders here, continuing the general state of denial. He is not at all afraid, he said, of the Jews attacking first. Israel, he added, is weak, riddled with internal disagreement and has no desire to fight. The man who is preparing means for destroying Israel shared with us the basic information he has on our situation. And in our experience, it is accurate information.

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Our behavior over the last few years, and especially over the last few months, has provided him with a wealth of overt intelligence - requiring little effort to obtain - about the weakness of the Jewish state; the state, which until around 30 years ago helped develop the health and agricultural infrastructure of Iran, armed its military and trained its elite units.

The Iranian president is judging Israel's strength not only according ideological hopes, but also on the basis of facts that are a result of the Lebanon war, for example. See how an Israeli division commander, a general, gets up and declares that he successfully commanded no less than nine brigades and that he also coordinated air and artillery support professionally. The person claiming victory did not manage, with these forces, to overpower several hundred Shi'ite fighters and even his prime minister and the Israeli defense minister declare victory. Ahmadinejad presumably is concluding from all this that Israel is in a state of total denial over what happened. And as far as he's concerned, also over what will happen.

After all, alongside this division commander, three other division commanders fought, and under their command there were probably other brigades. And if these were the results, he may conclude that the Israeli army is at a low point and the situation should be exploited. Indeed, this army has even lost the ability to learn lessons, as is indicated by the remarks of the division commander and his superiors. And now is the time to exploit the situation.

The war in Lebanon also taught Ahmadinejad that the government and the army in Israel are not willing to invest, as a sovereign state is obliged to, the necessary effort to prevent an attack against population centers. For 33 days, millions of Israelis lived under missile barrages, most of which were fired from Lebanon with his assistance, and their state was not willing to pay the cost required to free them from the nightmare. Israel, which up until the Yom Kippur War was careful to relocate the war, at a high intensity, to the enemy's territory, became a country on the receiving end, lacking security.

And if Ahmadinejad had any doubts about Israel's approach, based on what is happening in the Negev, he could determine that this is an ongoing, characteristic pattern of behavior and not a one-time failure. An Israeli town in the south absorbs 3,000 rockets in over six years, and the Zionist government is afraid, as in Lebanon, to do what it must. And if the Zionists are afraid to do what is necessary, because in densely populated Gaza dozens of civilians may also be killed, then it is all the more likely that they will not initiate a preemptive strike against Iran, where tens of thousands of citizens may die. If so, Ahmadinejad says to himself, then presumably we, who have no holds, will deliver the first strike against the Israelis.

In 2007, a majority of the world's Jews will be in the land of Israel. And the government of the sovereign state of Israel is responsible for their security. Based on the government's behavior and that of its predecessors in recent years, it is doubtful - and not just to Ahmadinejad - if it is capable of acting in accordance with the threat coming from Iran - and not just from Iran alone.

Because of the weakness we project, especially since the year 2000, the motivation to defeat the Jews once and for all and in their own country has greatly increased in Iran. And this is the meaning of Ahmadinejad's comments casting doubt on the ability and desire of the Israeli leadership to prevent an attack.

Israel's citizens and world Jewry should be very concerned about his remarks. And they should also be concerned about the government's and the army's debacles in Lebanon and in Sderot, which increased Ahmadinejad's motivation. Sderot is the image that today reflects the Israeli desire to live. And what is being reflected from there is not at all encouraging.