Jews run Hollywood, the old cliché goes.

So an outsider might find it strange that one of Hollywood’s biggest studios, Warner Bros., agreed to make a movie about one of the Jewish world’s greatest heroes with a star known for going on anti-Semitic tirades.

And when the plans to film “Judah Maccabee” recently fell apart, igniting a feud between producer Mel Gibson and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas that involved more accusations of anti-Semitism, Hollywood again went for Mel.

A number of industry figures interviewed by JTA, including lawyers, studio execs and publicists — all of them Jewish and a number of whom come from families who survived the Holocaust or fled the Nazis — defended Gibson over the Hungarian-born Eszterhas. Almost to a man, however, they declined to be quoted by name — as is typical in Hollywood.

Mel Gibson photo/ap-chris pizzello

Among those willing to go on the record, veteran producer Mike Medavoy, whose parents fled to Shanghai in the 1920s to escape the Russian pogroms, has known Gibson and Eszterhas for decades. Both have “issues,” he said, but he has a softer spot for Gibson.

“I really believe that everyone deserves a second chance,” Medavoy said. “I want to give Mel the benefit of the doubt. I think Mel’s problem is he’s a little immature and can’t handle his anger.”

Alan Nierob, Gibson’s longtime publicist and the son of Holocaust survivors, has always stood by his client.

The loyalty to Gibson of some in Hollywood comes despite the controversy over his portrayal of Jews in the 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ,” and his rant against Jews following a drunk driving arrest in 2006. Jewish actress Winona Ryder said in 2010 that Gibson had called her an “oven dodger” at a party in the mid-1990s.

The latest flap erupted when Eszterhas, who once was one of Hollywood’s flashiest screenwriters but hasn’t had a hit since 1997, wrote a lengthy letter to Gibson (leaked to the press), accusing him of only pretending to be developing a movie about Judah Maccabee, to help Gibson’s own image in the Jewish community. Eszterhas accused Gibson of setting him up — hiring him to write the script and then rejecting it not because it wasn’t good, but because Gibson actually “hates Jews” and never wanted to make the movie in the first place.

Gibson wrote a letter back to Eszterhas saying that his claims were “utter fabrications.” Gibson’s defenders suggested that Eszterhas’ attacks were exaggerations or lies meant to deflect from Gibson’s claim that Eszterhas’ script wasn’t any good and that’s why it was rejected by Warner Bros.

Through Nierob, Gibson declined to be interviewed for this story.

Eszterhas told JTA that “I stand behind the letter I wrote to Mel.”

Not everyone in Hollywood’s Jewish establishment has stood by Gibson. After Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006, Sony Pictures co-chairwoman Amy Pascal spoke out against him, and powerful agent Ari Emanuel called for a Gibson boycott.

When they were the only big names to speak out, former AOL Time Warner vice chairman Mel Adelson took out a large ad in the Los Angeles Times protesting the silence of many top Jewish Hollywood executives.

But by 2011, when Warner Bros. agreed to do “Judah Maccabee” with Gibson, it seemed all was forgiven.

Despite their support of Gibson, however, many in Hollywood also said they didn’t know why Warner Bros. had decided in the first place to let Gibson make a film about Judah Maccabee, the great Jewish warrior who fought and prevailed against a Hellenistic ruler who wanted to force the Jews to renounce their faith.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said last September that letting Gibson direct “Judah Maccabee” would be “like casting Bernie Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange.”

Now, he says simply, “everyone should have known.”

Warner Bros. spokesman Paul McGuire said the studio is “analyzing” what to do with the “Judah Maccabee” project. But studio sources say privately that the film has been shelved.

A source in Gibson’s camp said Gibson is determined to move forward with “Judah Maccabee” on his own, financing and developing it the way he did with “Passion of the Christ,” which became an unexpected hit.