"I said, turns out I'm from Palestine also. And we were having an amicable, disagreeing conversation," Lebowitz told NBC New York. But that conversation, he said, quickly got heated.
"He said, 'Your people are not going to exist anymore.' I said, can you tell me what that means, 'my people,'" Lebowitz said, to which the other man replied: "The Jews are not going to exist anymore."
"I said, 'Let me tell you something — you can Google it yourself, Jews have been around for 5,000 years,'" Lebowitz said.
That's when the banter turned violent.
"He screams out 'baby killers,' then he pushes his hand into my face, pushing me backwards," Lebowitz recalled. "I fell flat on my head, back part of my head. What a smack on the floor."