Does anyone have experience with making an expense claim against British Airways? We did and it was just refused - what is the next step?

On August 25th, we were on a return flight from London to Tel Aviv. About three hours into the flight, the captain announced that the plane would turn around and return to London, as BA had decided to cancel all flights to Israel due to the security situation.

The cabin crew and captain said the ground crew at Heathrow would assist us.

After landing and during the taxi, the captain told us that he'd had instructions and they were "collect your luggage from belt 11, clear immigration and make your way out of the airport".

When we got off the plane, there was 1 BA staff member there who was totally overwhelmed and shouted at us that it was not up to BA to get us to Israel as they'd now cancelled flights and we should seek alternative flights and claim on our (personal) insurance.

We went to the customer service desk at the baggage hall and he agreed to put us on a BA flight to Cyprus the following day - so we agreed and booked into a local hotel.

We then had to find flights from Cyprus back to Tel Aviv - that also involved staying a night in Cyprus.

So when we returned to Tel Aviv - 2 days later than planned, we submitted a claim against BA via their website to cover the hotel stays, food/expenses and the alternative flights from Cypurs back to Tel Aviv.

They just emailed us to say it's been refused!

Can anyone help?