JERUSALEM – The threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and a possible Israeli military strike are not the usual ingredients of comedy.

But Israelis are responding to the heated rhetoric and dire warnings with comic skits and Daffy Duck — gallows humor in the face of what their leaders say is a real danger.

“Eretz Nehederet” (A Wonderful Country), Israel’s top satirical TV show, recently showed a skit with two women at a restaurant.

“You’ve started working out again?” says one, biting into a juicy hamburger. “Of course, winter’s almost over and I don’t want to get to the beach double my size,” her friend responds. The first woman asks: “What beach? That thing with Iran is happening this summer.” Realizing the futility of a diet when the end is so near, the friend devours the burger.

A Facebook group is calling for Netanyahu not to start a war until after Madonna performs in Israel in May.

“It’s a very cathartic response to the existential fear we are experiencing in light of what the politicians are saying,” said Orr Knispel, editor of the Israeli pop culture magazine Pnai Plus.

Prime Minister Benjamin Net- anyahu’s rhetoric has come back to taunt him. A speech he gave in Washington this month spawned a viral video spoof.

Countering Iran’s claim that it intends to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, Netanyahu said, “If it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then what is it? That’s right, it’s a duck, but this duck is a nuclear duck.”

In a video, his words, repeated over and over, are intercut with snippets of a sputtering Daffy Duck, all set to catchy music.

But there is evidence the jokes are covering up some real fears.

“The Last Day,” a five-minute clip that scored hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, is a lifelike doomsday film depicting the day after an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The film’s creator, Ronen Barany, said the cultural responses to the Iran crisis are increasing because the Israeli public feels that the Iranian threat is more concrete than ever.