Tuvia Grossman, who was dragged out of a taxi in east Jerusalem and nearly beaten to death by a crowd of Palestinians at the start of the intifada in 2000, is making aliya today.

At the time of the attack, his story received international media attention, because a photo of a bloody Grossman, taken by a freelance photographer and mislabeled by the Associated Press, said Grossman was a Palestinian being beaten by an Israeli soldier. The caption also mistakenly placed the incident on the Temple Mount, when in fact it was at a gas station outside the Old City.

Grossman, along with 200 others, is to arrive Wednesday at Ben-Gurion Airport on the North American aliya assistance group Nefesh B'Nefesh's final summer flight.

"I knew that I wanted to be here, in Israel," Grossman said as he prepared to leave his hometown of Chicago for his flight. "Nothing was going to stop me."

Grossman, now 25, recently completed a law degree in Chicago, and he worked at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem last summer. He will be working as legal intern at Gornitzky & Co., an international commercial law firm in Tel Aviv. He plans to take the Israeli bar next year. While he knows that he will have to tackle the challenges facing any new immigrant, nothing can compare to the horror felt during the attack.

He remembers the details of the incident like it was yesterday.

It was the day after then opposition leader Ariel Sharon entered the Temple Mount plaza in September 2000.

It was also, Erev Rosh Hashana. Grossman, then a third-year yeshiva student in the Beit Yisrael section of the capital, was in a taxi on his way to the Western Wall with two friends. Along the way, the driver took a shortcut through Wadi Joz. As the car turned a corner just outside Lions Gate, dozens of Palestinians surrounded the taxi and smashed the windows with rocks.

Dragging Grossman out of the front seat, the rioters begin kicking him in the ribs and face, repeatedly smashed him on the head with a large rock and stabbed him in the back of the leg.

Slipping in and out of consciousness and unable to move because of the attackers holding him down, Grossman, perhaps on the verge of death, had a vision.

"It was right before Rosh Hashana and I was thinking of the shofar a lot at the time. Perhaps because of that, I suddenly remembered the story [from Judges] of Gideon being surrounded by the Midianite armies and how he blew on the shofar to scare the armies away."

Grossman, in what he says was not an instinctual move but a strategic decision, decided to take inspiration and hope for the best. Suddenly, he screamed and the rioters jumped back for a second, and with a surge of sheer adrenaline, he ran away as fast as he could.

"I don't remember feeling any pain, even though I was severely beaten and still had a knife in my leg. I just went as fast as I could. I was screaming Shema Yisrael," Grossman recalled, alluding to the prayer said by a Jew before he dies. "So here I am, running up a hill with about 40 Palestinians chasing after me and throwing rocks. But somehow I outran them and got to a gas station on the other side of the hill, where Israeli soldiers were."

The soldiers, seeing that Grossman was badly beaten and still being chased, surrounded his body and held up clubs and guns to ward off the mob. It was also, at that exact moment, that a freelance photographer took a shot of one of the soldiers, his club in the air, standing over a bloody Grossman.

The Associated Press, in giving a caption for the photo, identified the gas station, outside the Old City, as the Temple Mount and the victim as a Palestinian. The posting of the photo in The New York Times a day later caused a heated controversy, including a harsh letter from Grossman's father and eventually an apology from both the newspaper and AP.

After spending 10 days in two Jerusalem hospitals, Grossman was brought back against his will to Chicago.

"I was afraid that if I left Israel, I would have been too afraid to return after what happened. I was literally screaming 'no' as I was brought on the stretcher into the airplane, and I made my parents promise that as soon as I could walk again, I would go back to Israel."

After reconstructive surgery in Chicago, his broken nose treated and leg stitched from the knife wound, Grossman spent five months in a wheelchair and in physical therapy. He says now that physically, everything was perfect, although he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder when he comes near the area where the attack took place. The headaches return, the images come back.

Grossman, who said he would proudly serve in the army if drafted, has never been able to contact the soldiers who saved his life. The attackers were also never found. Grossman hopes to give back to help other victims of violence.

"You don't realize how many people's lives are affected forever from terrorist attacks. Some people are wounded for the rest of their life. Once I get settled in, I would love to assist victims of terror in anyway I can."

For now, he is just content at finally being back home.

"It's a very emotional experience, yet a conflicting experience at the same time," he said.

"On the one hand I'm leaving something behind, both in terms of my family and the place in which I grew up. But I'm returning to my homeland. What's truly great and uplifting is that I'm doing it with so many other people, all different people but all coming home."