I never understand this logic. The war is still defensive regardless where the targets are.

Fortification against NATO? If NATO wanted to attack Russia they would do it now. Prigozhin was able to march in Moscow with something NATO might sneeze out and forget about.

Kremlin propaganda says that Putin is invading Ukraine as a defensive measure, and that's horse shit. It's a war of brutal and barbaric conquest against a peaceful country.

Salami Slicing Tactics are actually a very real thing.

It's basically what Russia and China have been doing for decades

That is very very good, and depressingly accurate. The only difference today is that the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s pushed back the border to Russia farther away from Europe. However the inclusion of the Baltic countries pushed it slightly closer, and then Russia pushed it closer from their side by invading Crimea then Luhansk and Donetsk. Then Russian pushed again invading Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv. Then NATO moved closer with the induction of Finland and Sweden. So we're nearly back to the situation in that video skit.

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Salami tactics

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I'm unfortunately not sure how much of it's "values" and how much is "utility".
People have values, nations don't. Nations only exemplify their national values because the citizens will be outraged if they're breached too far. Otherwise a nations foreign policy is better looked at through a lens of detached utilitarianism.

Usually our value of "supporting our friends" and the self image of being the hero (I think WW2 was America's highschool football) lines up nicely with the utility it provides.
We get a lot of advantages out of our allies, not least of which is fat piles of sweet, sweet trade goods. We would never precondition military training exercises, intelligence sharing or sensitive service export regulation exemptions on getting a favorable trade deal on mangoes, but we do tend to reserve those things for our close allies, and trade agreements are a very efficient way to develop those bonds.
Waterway access lets us send our navy everywhere which massively reduces piracy, to the benefit of all, but to our benefit the most, as the leading consumer of oceanic transport goods.
A military base will get you very strong support, and furthers our security interests of global force projection.

Israel is very useful to us. The give us a naval port in the Mediterranean, military staging areas, and a regional toehold that would otherwise be significantly weaker. We also, again, get a lot of trade value from their medical supplies and electronics, and we get to sell them a lot of services.
Combined with the previously mentioned points about signaling strong resolve and unwavering support if you've earned it, it would be very costly for us to abandon Israel.

It's why our politicians with constituents who care about human rights are trying very hard to walk the tightrope of supporting Israel against Hamas while opposing killing civilians. (The messaging is not going well).
The Palestinians, unfortunately, do not possess strategic value. Their "value" comes from internal political pressure to not allow or support evil, which is tempered by the opposing political view being to make the evil worse, which explains a relatively subdued response.

With goods, sales, power, influence and PR worth tens of billions one one side, and internal political pressure towards an ethical stance that might endanger some fraction of that value on the other, it's a question of how much value we stand to loose by listening to that pressure, and exactly how strong that pressure is.