>> "there's no substantive way to fight App Store rejections"
You can appeal rejections and argue your case over a phone call. Happened to me recently and they reversed the decision of the reviewer (who misunderstood part of the apps functionality in relation to an app approval rule).
You can contact your local developer relations person at Apple. We had a crucially timed update get canned because the reviewer missed the notes we included. We contacted dev relations and it was sorted out very quickly.
You can appeal rejections and argue your case over a phone call. Happened to me recently and they reversed the decision of the reviewer (who misunderstood part of the apps functionality in relation to an app approval rule).