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If breaking the nuclear taboo isn't a strategic decision, nothing is.
The only thing Israel would gain from using a nuke over conventional weapons is the strategic value: A sign that they're willing to use nuclear weapons and a threat that the next move would be to cause massive casualties at the attacker's home front.
Words have multiple meanings and are hard. You're correct broadly. But specifically in a nuclear weapons context, a "strategic" nuke means something very different, and almost always has. The tactical-strategic distinction is partially a historical artifact because in the 50s and 60s and even sometimes later, there were indeed people who wanted to use tactical nukes in a tactical way notably distinct from strategic ones.
The classic way of thinking about it is: Is a conflict in that state of "regular" war? Or has it reached "total" war? If regular war: maybe use a tactical bomb if conditions are right (they often aren't, plus the taboo on top). If total war: maybe use a strategic nuke.
Size of nuke is a conceivable axis of escalation for a conflict, so many non-proliferation people specifically agree with you that even the mere existence of smaller bombs makes an exchange more likely, where the initiator might want to "send a message" but not actually commit to the wholesale destruction and death a nuclear bomb usually might entail.
We don't know much about Israel's arsenal, so it's hard to say how they have configured their bomb yields. Most presume that the bulk are in the lower range, but some reports say they at least have a couple large enough to have a significant EMP effect -- very high altitude burst for this purpose is a notable but less-discussed use of nukes.
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