(and this is where their lack of systems understanding failed them
You could apply that concept to practically every aircraft accident. In another words avoid hurting the pilots feelings by saying it is never his fault. It is the fault of the designer. if a student pilot stuffs his round-out in his Tiger Moth and bends the propeller the fault is whoever wrote the Tiger Moth Pilots manual for omitting the vital fact that pushing forward on the stick in this design of aircraft can cause the nose to dig in.
Once upon a time we took responsibility for our own actions. In other words we stuffed up by over-controlling during on the flare, or left the power on for too long and floated off the end of the runway. Now we see the tendency to get out of trouble by blaming everything else except ourselves. The Amsterdam crash was a massive pilot cock-up from the time the autothrottles closed during final to the final impact. It was nothing to do with lack of systems knowledge.
One theory came from a first officer of that airline and that was ethnic culture played a significant role in that accident. The cockpit gradient with the former military trained captain was so steep that neither of the two officers would have dared to take decisive action to prevent the accident lest they caused loss of face to the captain. The operative word being
decisive.