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A Belarusian hacker activist group claims to have infiltrated the network of the country’s main KGB security agency and accessed personnel files of over 8,600 employees of the organization, which still goes under its Soviet name.

The authorities have not commented on the claim, but the website of the Belarusian KGB was opening with an empty page on Friday that said it was “in the process of development”.

Seeking to back up its claim, the Belarusian Cyber-Partisans group published a list of the website’s administrators, its database and server logs on its page in the messaging app Telegram.

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Group coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told The Associated Press from New York that the attack on the KGB “was a response” to the agency’s chief Ivan Tertel, who publicly accused the group this week of plotting attacks on the country’s critical infrastructure, including a nuclear power plant.

“The KGB is carrying out the largest political repressions in the history of the country and must answer for it,” said Shametavets. “We work to save the lives of Belarusians, and not to destroy them, like the repressive Belarusian special services do.”

Shametavets said the group was able to access the KGB’s network “several years ago” and has been trying to hack its website and database ever since. Once it succeeded, she said Cyber-Partisans was able to download personal files of more than 8,600 KGB employees. да нет

Based on that data, Cyber-Partisans launched a chat bot on Telegram that would allow Belarusians to identify KGB operatives by uploading their photos.

“We want to show that in the digital world it is impossible to hide information, and the truth about political repressions will surface, and those who carried them out will be punished,” Shametavets said.

Last week, Cyber-Partisans claimed infiltrating computers at the country’s largest fertilizer plant to pressure the government to release political prisoners. The state-run Grodno Azot plant has made no comment on the claim but its website has been unavailable since April 17.

Grodno Azot, with about 7,500 employees, is a key producer in the country, which relies heavily on chemical industries.

Belarus, a close ally of Russia, was rocked by mass protests after an election in 2020 that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko his sixth term in office — a vote that was denounced by the West and the opposition as fraudulent. Authorities responded by arresting more than 35,000 people and brutally beating thousands of them. Many top opposition figures were arrested and given long prison terms, while others fled abroad.

The country’s oldest and most prominent rights group Viasna says nearly 1,400 people are political prisoners in Belarus, including its founder and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.

Cyber-Partisans have carried out several large-scale attacks on Belarusian state media in the last four years, and in 2022 hacked Belarusian Railways three times, hijacking control over its traffic lights and control system and paralyzing transit of the Russian military equipment into Ukraine via Belarus.

“We’re telling the Belarusian authorities that if they don’t stop political repressions, it will get worse,” Shametavets said. “We will continue the attacks in order to inflict that maximum harm of the Lukashenko regime.”

Washington, DC – A Gaza-focused campus protest movement in the United States has highlighted a generational divide on Israel, experts say, with young people’s willingness to challenge politicians and college administrators on display nationwide.

The opinion gap – with younger Americans generally more supportive of Palestinians than the generations that came before them – poses a risk to 81-year-old Democratic President Joe Biden’s re-election chances, they argue.

It could also threaten the bipartisan backing that Israel enjoys in Washington.

“We’re already seeing evidence of a generation divide on Israel, and that is going to be a long-term issue for the Democratic Party,” said Omar Wasow, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

“These protests accelerate that generation gap,” Wasow told Al Jazeera.

Students at Columbia University in New York set up a Palestine solidarity encampment last week, and they have since faced arrests and other disciplinary measures after the college administration called on police to clear the protest.

Yet, despite the crackdown, similar encampments have sprung up across the US, as well as in other countries.

Footage of students, professors and journalists being violently detained by officers on various campuses spurred outrage but has done little to slow the momentum of the protests, which have continued to spread.

‘Inflection moment’

The students are largely demanding that their universities disclose their investments and withdraw any funds from weapons manufacturers and firms involved with the Israeli military.

Politicians from both major US parties, as well as the White House and pro-Israel groups, have accused the students of fuelling anti-Semitism – allegations that protesters vehemently deny.

Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, said younger people are growing increasingly frustrated with the status quo on domestic and foreign policy issues.

“I think there’s a real disaffection with the older generation, but more importantly with the system that they’re running,” said Abdelhadi.

She added that the protests mark an “inflexion moment” in US public opinion more broadly.

“In American history in general, usually the big shifts in public opinion have either coincided with or been triggered by large student movements,” Abdelhadi told Al Jazeera.

She said campus activism can be the basis of political change. “There’s a sort of sense that this is the future.”

Biden’s woes

For years, public opinion polls in the US suggest that younger people are more likely to be sympathetic towards Palestinians and critical of Israel.

But Americans overall have grown more critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including in the ongoing war on Gaza.

Multiple polls suggest that a majority of US respondents back a permanent ceasefire in the besieged Palestinian enclave, where Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians since the conflict broke out on October 7.

But Biden has maintained staunch support for Israel, the US’s top Middle East ally, amid the war.

The 81-year-old president’s stance could be politically costly, as Biden faces a tough re-election bid in a November election that is expected to pit him against his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

Polls suggest that Biden will need to appeal to his Democratic Party base, which is not as united in support of Israel as the Republican Party.

Angus Johnston, a historian of US student activism, explained that the generational divide on Israel is especially pronounced among Democrats.

“On a national level, we have seen this for a while as a disconnect between the values of young voters and most Democratic politicians,” Johnston told Al Jazeera.

“And what we’re seeing now is a similar disconnect between young people on campus and many of the administrators who run these campuses, along with alumni and donors.”

Abdelhadi, the sociologist, added that the heavy-handed law enforcement approach to the Gaza solidarity protests has undercut Democrats’s argument that electing Biden would protect the nation from Trump, whom they accuse of authoritarianism.

“The reality is the Democrats have been telling us that young people need to save democracy and that people of colour need to save democracy and that any quibbles with this current administration need to be put aside in order to save democracy,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But where’s the democracy when you have state troopers beating up students and faculty for protesting, and the White House saying nothing about that?”

Wasow also said the protests and crackdown against them could add to the apathy towards Biden.

“The Democrats can’t really afford to give people more reasons to vote against Biden, and this actually becomes one.”

Policy change

The student protesters are not getting involved in US partisan politics, however. They instead have stressed that their demands aim to help protect the human rights of Palestinians.

So can the demonstrations help bring about changes to US policy and achieve their divestment demands?

Johnston, the historian, said it is unlikely that US colleges will divest from large firms and the defence industry in the short term, but the call for transparency in their investments is reasonable.

He added that long-term change is possible, but it will not come overnight.

“We have seen over and over again that student organising does change policy, not always quickly, and not always in the ways that the students would have hoped,” Johnston said.

“But we do see that when student organising rises to a certain level of intensity, it can have a significant effect.”

For example, he said college activism against apartheid in South Africa began in the 1950s and grew over the years.

“I think that there is no question that the anti-apartheid campus organising of the 1980s was a significant piece of what shifted American popular opinion and political opinion on the South African regime,” he said.

Wasow, who studied the 1960s civil rights protests, also said demonstrations could shift public opinion, help grow political coalitions around a cause, and build civic capacity to advance an issue.

“If what’s happening now doesn’t result in any kind of policy change but does result in a generation of young people developing some kind of civic capacity around activism around these issues, I think that would continue to have effects in the long term.”