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Israelis increasingly perceive their public sector as corrupt relative to other countries, according to a global index released Wednesday by the Peace Index. Israel ranked at number 39 in the world, continuing the country's slide from previous years; last year Israel ranked at number 36 and in 2010 it ranked 30. Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked 176 countries on perceptions of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 - 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean.On a more positive note, Israel's score, 60, was slightly higher than in 2011, when it scored 59, indicating that while it continues to fall behind other countries, Israelis are slowly growing more confident in the public sector.Denmark, Finland and New Zealand tied for the top slot, with a score of 90. At the bottom of the list ranked Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia, all with a score of eight.Though lagging behind other Western countries, Israel continued to rank ahead of most Middle Eastern and North African countries, where 78% of the countries scored below 50. Leading the group was Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - the only two countries that ranked ahead of Israel. At the bottom of the list was Iraq, with a rank of 18.“We must ensure that there are real consequences to corruption," said Huguette Labelle, Chair, Transparency International. "‘No to impunity’ cannot just be a slogan – it must be carried out with all our combined strength and inspire citizens to speak up and to no longer tolerate corruption."